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POPULAR EDITION WITH NEW PREFACE 



THE STAKES OF 
DIPLOMACY 

By WALTER LIPPMANN 

** Author of " Drift and Mastery," "A Preface to Politics," etc. 

MR. LIPPMANN'S new preface contains his expla- 
nation of President Wilson's diplomacy in the 
great war. It gives the large reasons which seem to 
lie behind American foreign policy at the present time, 
and lays down the premises which are in the minds of 
those who realize what the President meant when he 
said that this was the last great war in which the United 
States could be neutral. It is an informed interpretation 
of the Wilson doctrine which is now being unfolded. 

This book makes a proposal which might do away 
with the prime cause of international friction, by pre- 
venting the emotion of patriotism and questions of 
national prestige from becoming involved in the pro- 
tection of citizens and commercial interests in the back- 
ward places of the earth. 

It is with exactly those questions of constructive 
world policy which all of us are now anxiously asking 
ourselves that the author grapples. 

"By far his most logical, most coherent, best rounded book." — 
Boston Transcritt 






IF E STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE POEMS OF PAUL MARIETT 

Edited with an introduction 

A PREFACE TO POLITICS 
DRIFT AND MASTERY 



HE STAKES OF 
DIPLOMACY 



BY 



WALTER LIPPMANN 



" It is the great amount of unexploited raw material 
in territories politically backward, and now imper- 
fectly possessed by the nominal owners, which at the 
present moment constitutes the temptation and the 
impulse to war of European States." — Rear-Admi- 
RAL A. T. Maham: Force 171 International Relations. 



SECOND EDITION 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



-n^^^ 
^ ^ ^ 



V 



\Vl 



COPTHIQHT, 1915, 1917, 
BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
Published Novend)er, 1915 



fo y^" 



'Cl,Ai57325 



THE QUINN A BOOEN CO. PRESS 
8AHW*r, N. i. 



FEB 23 1917 
'1 



TO THE STAFF 
OF 

The New Republic 



CONTENTS 



CHAFTKB PAGE 

■v Preface. At the Turning Point of Amer- 
ican FoREiGK Policy ix 

Introductiok 3 

PART I. 

I. A Discovery for Democrats .... 15 

II, The Uses of a Kino 26 

III. V Foreigners and Frontiers 38 

IV. /The Line of Least Resistance .... 47 
V. Patriotism in the Rough 58 

VI. Patriotism, Business, and Diplomacy . . 71 

PART II. 

VII. Arenas of Friction 87 

VIII. A Little Realpolitik Ill 

IX. A Proposal "" . 127 

X. Algeciras: a Landmark 136 

XK The Core of Imperialism 150 

PART III. 

XII. The Reaction at Home 163 

XIII. The Future of Patriotism 172 

XIV^ A Broader Base for Diplomacy .... 189 

XV. Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs . . . 196 

PART IV. 

Epilogue 

XVI. The Strategy of Peace 207 

Index 231 

vii 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

AT THE TURNING POINT OF AMERICAN 
FOREIGN POLICY 

In President Wilson's circular note of Decem- 
ber 18, 1916, he used one sentence which brought 
forth a storm of anger from the people of the 
Allied nations. The unhappy passage said that: 

" He takes the liberty of calling attention to the 
fact that the objects which the statesmen of the bellig- 
erents on both sides have in mind in this war are 
virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their 
own people and to the world. " 

On second thought it was obvious enough that 
what the President meant to write was something 
like this : When the statesmen on both sides state 
in general terms to their own people and to the 
world what they have in mind they use virtually 
the same words. The biting truth of the passage 
is evident enough. It says not that the German 
Emperor and the King of the Belgians have the 
same objects in mind, but that every statesman, 
angel or devil if you like, is quoting the same 
scripture. 

Iz 



X THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

It is a queer and very important fact, the per- 
sistence with which hypocrisy continues to be the 
homage vice pays to virtue. Governments will 
send armies forth to turn nations into ash heaps 
and shambles, but they always proclaim they are 
doing it to enhance civilization, safeguard liberty, 
and fulfill the wishes of the all-highest. German 
officials did commit two bits of frankness before 
the invasion of Belgium, the one containing the 
phrase about a scrap of paper, the other stating 
that the violation of an inoffensive neutral was a 
wrong. But the candor proved too costly, not 
only with the outer world but with the German 
people, and ever since there has been a persistent 
propaganda to blur and confuse the matter. In 
spite of the supposed efficiency of the German 
state education, in spite of the supposed prussian- 
ization of the people, their stomachs were not 
strong enough for the truth about the minds of 
their rulers. The whole ghastly business had to 
be overlaid with buncombe even for the greatest 
military people in the world. They had to be 
told, in fact they insisted upon being told, they 
were knights without fear and above reproach. 

This book is primarily an analysis of that pop- 



PREFACE xi 

ular gullibility which makes democracy the victim 
of its diplomacy. It attempts to show how patri- 
otism and idealism are subtly entangled in impe- 
rialist politics, how they are unconsciously 
exploited for purposes which rarely appear on the 
surface of public opinion. It goes on to say that 
these purposes are not as so many pacifists im- 
agine a mere conspiracy against democracy. The 
struggle for the possession of backward terri- 
tories, the giddy oscillations of the balance of 
power, the conflict of armaments are due at bot- 
tom to two great facts : first, the profound and 
tempting disorganization of practically all the 
territory of Asia, Africa, the Near East and 
Latin- America ; and second, the weakness, the in- 
efficiency and the sloth of liberalism which has 
ignored that problem and left it as a field of in- 
trigue. Until liberalism is triumphant at home, 
powerful and intelligent abroad to create a work- 
able organization for the weak states, it will be 
used and abused by governments and cliques at 
infinite cost. It will continue to be the lamb's 
skin which the wolf wears. 

This book contains some harsh criticism of the 
League to Enforce Peace. It was written before 



xii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

the idea had gained currency, before any govern- 
ment had declared in favor of it. But the success of 
the propaganda has been so great, President 
Wilson has committed the country so deeply to 
the idea, that no one who is seeking for material 
out of which to build a better international struc- 
ture can now dismiss the fact of its success be- 
cause the idea is weak and inadequate. To do 
that is to be guilty of pride of opinion and to 
waste an opportunity. 

Although the idea of such a league has existed 
for centuries, its popularity just now is due to 
the feeling that *' this thing must never happen 
again." " This thing " is the indecent haste with 
which Germany precipitated Europe into war. 
The object of the league is to have all nations 
banded together against another such assault. 
The feeling behind it is that longing for order and 
security for which the bulk of the people in Britain 
and France are fighting. The plan is liked by the 
democracies, distrusted, half-heartedly accepted 
or altogether rejected by the insiders. Mr. 
Roosevelt, for example, is an insider in interna- 
tional affairs, trained to think of them much as 
Bismarck, Disraeli and Delcasse have thought of 



PREFACE xiii 

them. In the early months of the war Mr. Roose- 
velt was caught in the sweeping tide of humani- 
tarianism and was the first American of promi- 
nence to advocate a league to enforce peace. He 
called it a posse comitatus of nations. But as 
time went on, Mr. Roosevelt recovered his balance 
and began to run true to form. He has since ex- 
pressed the insider's dislike for the scheme. 

Much of this distrust would disappear, I 
imagine, if the plan were looked at in its relation 
to the practical political situation at the close of 
this war and the period that will follow. It is not 
one of those paper schemes which will automat- 
ically bring peace to the world. On paper it is a 
poor scheme from a pacifist point of view because 
it ignores the roots of international disorder. The 
real value of the idea is generally concealed, but 
can be stated bluntly and roughly as follows: 

There are now and will probably be for some 
time to come at least two and perhaps three 
serious trouble-makers in the world, Germany, 
Japan, and Russia. Britain, France, and the 
United States are not saints but they have gone so 
far towards liberalism, and they are so well sated 
in territory, that they desire a peaceful world. 



xiv THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

Around them cluster the American Republics, the 
small neutrals of Europe, and China, the supreme 
danger spot of the world's future. Britain, 
France, America must draw together because 
their interests are at bottom the same. But in 
drawing together they are confronted with the 
possibility of a coalition between Germany, 
Austria, Russia, and Japan. That is the night- 
mare which today haunts the secret thought of 
the western world, for it opens up an indefinite 
vista of armament and dread and agony. That 
the danger is not imaginary is shown by many 
signs : by the Russo-Japanese treaty, the very open 
hostility in Japan to Britain and the hearty 
admiration for Germany, the existence in Russia 
of a powerful pro-German party, and in Germany 
of a powerful pro-Russian party. 

The keystone of the coalition is Germany, and 
the fundamental problem of the coming peace is 
whether Germany will become an eastern or a 
western power. If she can be attached to the 
west, the world is fairly safe for a long time to 
come. For many years Russia could not think of 
aggression which the Occident opposed, and Japan 
would be isolated. But with Germany and Japan 



PREFACE XV 

in alliance, with all Russia's resources to organize, 
the liberal powers would be almost helpless. 

This struggle for Germany exists within Ger- 
many. It is reflected roughly in the conflict be- 
tween the Foreign office and the conservatives, be- 
tween semi-liberal Germany and those who follow 
von Tirpitz and Falkenhayn. These two groups 
are sharply distinguished in Germany, but from 
the western point of view not sharply enough. It 
is clear that Bethmann-HoUweg, for example, 
represents a Germany which is far better than 
that of his opponents. It is not clear that he is 
strong enough, or at least liberal enough, to force 
Germany into the western group to which America 
inevitably belongs. 

The thing for which France and Britain are 
fighting is called the destruction of Prussian mili- 
tarism. What they mean is that they are fighting 
to discredit and destroy the prestige of the con- 
servative military party. They believe quite 
rightly that if they can do this a democratic 
Germany will shake itself free, and with that Ger- 
many they can live in some harmony. This is the 
reason Americans could not be neutral in thought 
or impartial in act during the war. The main 



xvi THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

object of the Allies is essentiial to the safety of the 
western world. And if we should be drawn into 
the war, as is not altogether improbable, that 
too would be our chief purpose. 

But all along another danger has existed. It 
was that aggressive groups in the Entente na- 
tions would talk about carrying the war or would 
actually try to carry the war to a point where the 
German people would find themselves helpless for 
the future. A vindictive policy instead of destroy- 
ing German militarism would almost surely con- 
firm it. There is nothing that strengthens 
despotism so much as fear. What liberal friends 
of the Allies have dreaded is that violent and self- 
ish forces would wish to prolong the war so hid- 
eously, would advocate so harsh a peace, that the 
people of the Central Empires would come to 
think of Prussian leadership as their one perma- 
nent means of protection. Roughly speaking what 
liberals must wish for is a fearful jar on the bat- 
tlefield which will lower the German army's pride, 
and then a generous policy towards the German 
nation to show it that life is possible without ex- 
treme militarism. So far as Germany is to be 
** taught a lesson " this seems to be about all that 



PREFACE xvii 

warfare can teach her. For the more delicate task 
of reforming her government, her morals, and her 
manners, we must trust to the memories of this 
agony, the failure to accomplish anything by it, 
and the immense burden of debt which will gener- 
ate class struggles within Germany. The Allies 
can show that the military leadership is neither 
profitable nor invincible ; the rest they must leave 
to the evolution of democracy. Having taught 
what they could to Germany they will have to 
look within their own hearts and wash out the 
Pharisee's taint. 

In all this America inevitably plays an im- 
mense role, though silently and undramatically. 
Our neutrality has been so benevolent to the Allies 
that it is difficult to conceive what the course of 
the war would have been had we enforced our 
" rights " impartially on both sides. One thing is 
clear. An unflinching assertion of American com- 
mercial rights against allied sea power would 
have brought us into collision with Britain and 
France long before the submarine brought us to 
the edge of a collision with Germany. We hardly 
dare to imagine the full consequences, but the net 
effect would have been to make us the virtual 



xviii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ally of Germany. We chose instead, and chose 
wisely I think, to become what the Germans 
rightly describe as the tacit partner of the 
Entente. We have not been impartial, we have 
not meant to be, because we could not afford to 
aid the aggressor. Within the limits which the 
American people would approve, our government 
has thrown its weight against Germany. 

We have wished to see the liberal purposes of 
the Allies achieved. With the more aggressive 
purposes which emerge now and then the American 
people have had no sympathy. They have no 
desire, for example, to help Russia to Constanti- 
nople or Rumania to Transylvania. It is only in 
the main purposes of the Allies that we, or for 
that matter the democracies of England and 
France, have any vital interest. By a benevolent 
neutrality, perhaps even by entrance into the war, 
we would help them realize those ends. But we 
cannot give sympathy or aid to a policy which 
becomes illiberal and overshoots the mark. 

Our part is to act as a stabilizing influence upon 
the European system. We have consciously to 
exert our influence against aggression and undue 
power. Our resources give us a weight in world 



PREFACE xix 

politics which it is impossible to ignore. There is 
no such thing as " staying out." To do nothing 
is in the condition of Europe just as positive an 
act as to do something. The real choice is not 
between isolation and partnership, but between a 
partnership which will create security and one 
which will encourage trouble. How best to use 
the power which we possess is the problem of our 
diplomacy. 

To join the Allies by an unlimited pledge would 
not accomplish our objects. Inevitably it would 
encourage tory influences to use the strength we 
would add for aggressive purposes. To join the 
Central Empires is of course out of the question. 
The policy which we are looking for is one which 
associates us with the Allied democracies and still 
acts as a moderating influence on their imperial- 
ism. This means that in case we entered the war 
we did so on a basis of limited liability, and that 
after the war our power was a conscious factor 
against aggression. More concretely this means 
that we would be ready to fight in this war or in 
the future to guarantee a public law under which 
small nations were sheltered and all nations pro- 
tected against the refusal to submit quarrels to 



XX THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

legal adjustment and the opinion of the world. 

This is still merely a formula, but a very valu- 
able one at the moment. What it actually does 
is to offer France and Britain a defensive alliance, 
and to the German nation a reason for abandon- 
ing militarism as the chief method of diplomacy. 
It is a method of using our influence so that the 
people of Europe are not forced to put their 
whole faith in armies. It is a way of strengthen- 
ing the democracies. If it is taken seriously, and 
skillfully pressed, it may help to ensure that mod- 
erate settlement by which alone the better objects 
of the war can be realized. 

Looked at this way the League to Enforce 
Peace is something more than pacifist sentiment. 
It is a fairly accurate reflection of a new American 
foreign policy. It expresses in idealistic terms 
our relationship to the balance of power in 
Europe. The idea has been welcomed, let us say 
mildly, by the liberals of western Europe. It has 
been taken up with something like real enthusiasm 
in America. This is not an accident. It is due at 
bottom, I believe, to the fact that the plan of the 
league actually grows out of our present position 
in the world. 



PREFACE xxi 

This interpretation will shock many who have 
subscribed to the idea. Its realistic basis has been 
discussed very little, and on that basis it might 
never be accepted by the American people. It is 
not a popular way of stating the theory, and if 
the plan is to be popular it will not be preached 
widely as practical world politics. Nevertheless 
the unattractive truth can not be shirked, and it 
would be folly to pretend that a league of peace 
would by its mere existence keep the peace perma- 
nently. What it may do is to keep Europe in 
equilibrium for a generation, create a certain 
atmosphere of security and internationalism; it 
may allay fear and distrust. 

It is two things. It is an expression of Ameri- 
can interest in foreign politics, and it is a tem- 
porary shelter after the storm. Under that 
shelter the real work can perhaps begin. That 
work is to create international tissue and a safer 
national structure. The League might become the 
administrative center of that considerable web of 
political, legal, economic, social, and cultural 
organization which existed before the war and will 
continue to be essential after it. The League 
might become the means of adjusting tariffs, of 



xxii THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

maintaining the open door in backward territories. 
It might even become the trustee of disputed 
areas. There is no difficulty in inventing machin- 
ery if the forces that operate it are fairly stable. 
The League might, for example, administer the 
Dardanelles, might control railroads and ports 
that several nations claim and no nation should \ 
monopolize. It might appoint the United States 
or a European neutral trustee for some contested 
territory, or it might set up the international 
commissions which are suggested in this book. 

There is a wide choice of instruments once a 
morale exists. So far as one can judge now the 
only method of creating that morale is to intro- 
duce American influence in Europe through a 
League to Enforce Peace. It is only a beginning 
to be sure, but it appears to be the right one. A 
little stability will encourage a little more 
democracy, and democracy in its turn by reducing 
aggression will add to stability. The immediate 
tactics of peace are to establish enough order for 
a few decades at least in order to release some of 
the more generous forces of mankind. 

W. L. 

January first, 1917. 



INTRODUCTION 

An antarctic explorer once told me that while he 
was in the polar regions his dreams by night and 
his fancies by day were concerned almost exclu- 
sively with the dinner he would order at his club 
in London. His mind reached out lovingly for 
complicated meals, polished silverware, and fine 
linen, for large high-ceilinged rooms, thick soft 
carpets, and the shining shirt-fronts of perfectly 
ordered men. That for the time being had been 
his notion of paradise, and I dare say the vision 
was what all true visions are. They tell us what 
we should like to have but haven't, what we should 
have liked to do but didn't, what we intend to do 
but can't. 

In all the diplomatic dispatches which preceded 
the war, there is nothing more pathetic than Sir 
Edward Grey'^ despairing effort at the very last 
moment to picture a better European system. 
With great caution, while the armies were mobiliz- 
ing, he suggested a European concert, " some 

3 



4 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

more definite rapprochement between the Powers," 
a plan " hitherto too Utopian to form the sub- 
ject of definite proposals." What was it that had 
made a plan " hitherto utopian " suddenly com- 
mend itself to this diplomat? It was the immedi- 
ate prospect of a war which every well-informed 
person has been expecting for a decade. But so 
long as the war was not an immediate menace, the 
diplomatic imagination regarded its thin vision of 
a concert as utopian. It was only when the chan- 
celleries were refusing to agree at all that the idea 
of agreement seemed a practical vision. It was 
as if the emotion which had formerly animated the 
intricate game of diplomacy, and had starved the 
vision of another and better game, was suddenly 
deflected from all its other preoccupations into the 
more single idea of European harmony. 

But the fact is that the European concert was 
more utopian when Sir Edward Grey embraced 
it than "hitherto" when he had rejected it. In 
the last days of July it was indeed a half-baked 
scheme. Why was it a half-baked scheme? What 
do we mean by " half-baked "? We mean, it seems 
to me, that the idea has never grown in the warmth 
of our interest. It is an idea, rather cold and a 



INTRODUCTION 5 

little stale, because it has lain neglected upon the 
top layers of the mind. A really mature idea is 
saturated with our experience ; it is an idea which 
we have lived with, our love and fear have wrought 
it. Around it have clustered great strains of asso- 
ciation; it has been weathered by time. But Sir 
Edward Grey's plan was the mere ghost of an idea, 
conjured up by despair. 

The war has produced many such visions, which 
when analyzed turn out to be, like the antarctic 
explorer's dinner, a pathetic feeling that what we 
haven't got is what we most need. Of course, there 
was this much obvious truth in it : Europe at war 
most needed peace. But the feeling that the oppo- 
site was desirable went further than that. It 
dominated the thoughts of liberals and gave life to 
a number of plans for permanent peace. 

I was in Europe when the war broke out, and I 
can recall vividly that two of the outstanding im- 
pressions of the last days of negotiation were the 
secrecy of the diplomats and the swiftness of 
events. It all seemed like a terrific plunge, let 
loose by a few men who consulted nobody. On top 
of that came the sense that Germany was the ag- 
gressor against small nations like Belgium and 



6 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

against the French Republic. In the heart of 
Europe lay democratic Switzerland at peace. Be- 
yond the ocean men saw America outside the broil. 
Was it any wonder that liberals jumped to the 
conclusion that the enemy of peace was secret 
diplomacy, the refusal to arbitrate, and that the 
remedy for war was the preservation of small na- 
tions, the downfall of dynasties, and the spread of 
democracies.'^ Those were the opposites of the 
forces which seemed to have precipitated Europe 
into war, and liberal emotion flowed to them. Eu- 
rope was fighting; fighting is monstrous. Europe 
was armed ; let us work for disarmament. Europe 
was undemocratic ; let us insist on democracy. 
Small nations were trampled; they must be pre- 
served. One nation refused to arbitrate; arbitra- 
tion should be made compulsory. The peace pro- 
grammes most current in England and America 
to-day were the inevitable reaction to what the 
lovers of peace knew and felt in the early days of 
August. They were born of that pain which is at 
once their honor and their bias. 

As the war has dragged on, other ideas have 
made themselves felt. There has been a vague but 
grudging recognition that trade and finance are 



INTRODUCTION ' 7 

involved in diplomacy, and there has appeared a 
mass of literature interested not so much in the 
machinery of peace as in dealing with the provoca- 
tions to war. But the chief effect of strain has 
been the eruption of a great uncertainty within the 
minds of men, followed by a rushing to cover. I 
do not refer alone to the agitation for " prepared- 
ness." I refer to the renascence of very old loyal- 
ties — a kind of world-wide retreat to the father- 
land. For it is not the German-Americans alone 
whose loyalty has become hyphenated. Every- 
where men are reviving their oldest associations — 
turning back to their origins — searching for a 
pride in what they came from which obscures the 
hopes of their goal. For origins are a haven in 
distress. They are our mother's arms, and they 
are more friendly in time of danger than the open 
country of a future. " There," we say, " is our 
identity. Let us cling to that lest we be sub- 
merged. Adventure must wait for more prosperous 
times." 

Like sheep in a shower we huddle about the 
leader. Whatever seems firm and established we 
turn to instinctively. A procession of reaction- 
aries has returned from exile ; men whom we hoped 



8 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

never again to see in public life are with us once 
more, feeling more certain of themselves than they 
have felt for fifteen years. The old shibboleths 
are uttered without a blush, for all old things are 
congenial to us now. They promise rest in a 
world at war. And though the assurance they 
offer is disheartening, it is assurance, and panic 
is in the air. 

A subtle analyst might follow the effects of this 
apprehensiveness into the intimacies of our souls. 
He might show, I imagine, that we are less flexible 
in our thinking, at once more dogmatic and more 
capricious. It is no longer surprising to find 
pacifists non-resistant in one breath and eager 
to annihilate Germany in the other. There has 
been such a loss of liberal ease that all of us take 
our ideas with an animal loyalty. For the time 
being we have identified our opinions with our 
safety; whoever attacks them attacks us. There 
is more intolerance abroad than we have been used 
to, and the humane capacity for playing with ideas 
and speculating freely has almost disappeared. 
We take thought seriously, perhaps the worst way 
there is of taking thought. For the life which 
ideas are intended to control is tumbled and varied 



INTRODUCTION 9 

and flowing, alive with curiosity, and exhaustingly 
subtle. Even in our surest moments, thought has 
always plodded along behind clumsily enough ; but 
now with the grimness of war to weigh us down 
and panic to make us uncertain, we are more 
heavy-footed than ever. We are hardly in the 
temper to see facts lucidly or to be inventive about 
our problem. 

These difficulties are made more acute by the 
fact that the things we have to think about are so 
unreal to us. We are feeding on maps, talking of 
populations as if they were abstract lumps, and 
tuning our minds to a scale unheard of in history. 
To how many of us does the word Slovak convey 
the picture of fathers and mothers and children, 
of human beings with habits and personalities as 
intimate as our own? Even to highly cultivated 
people the word Slovak probably calls up the as- 
sociation of " light pink patches with diagonal 
shading " somewhere in bewildering Austria- 
Hungary. How many people have ever heard of 
the Szekels of Transylvania? Yet there are over 
800,000 of them, all entitled to a place in the sun 
and all capable of making trouble if it is denied to 
them. When you consider what a mystery the 



10 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

East Side of New York is to the West Side, the 
business of arranging the world to the satisfaction 
of the people in it may be seen in something like 
its true proportions. 

It is no wonder that we have taken refuge 
in abstractions like Nationality, Race, Culture. 
They are easier to think about than men. They 
introduce that simplicity into the mind which it 
longs for so ardently. Nor is it any wonder that 
we have embraced thin solutions of intricate ques- 
tions, that Mr. Bryan banks on arbitration treaties, 
that a section of American socialists asks for a 
referendum on declarations of war, that others 
have decided they will never fight, or that many 
women are refusing to buy lead soldiers for their 
children. We hesitate in bewilderment between 
those who advise us to be too weak to fight 
and those who wish us to be too strong to 
fight. 

The man who claimed that he was not bewildered 
would write himself down a fool. We are chal- 
lenged, every one of us, to think our way out of 
the terrors amidst which we live. That challenge 
is an excuse for adding to the endless books in- 
spired by the war. I have been told that this is 



INTRODUCTION 11 

a time for deeds, not words. There is no lack of 
deeds in the world. They happen, however, to be 
monstrous deeds. 

W. L. 

New York City. 

September, 1915. 



PART I 



CHAPTER I 

A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 

The day after the Lusitania was destroyed, we 
realized that one man had it in his power to send 
this country to war. The responsibility and the 
power, so tremendous that it might decide the 
world war, so far-reaching that it might alter our 
whole history, turned for a few dizzy days on the 
judgment of one man. Had Mr. Wilson wished 
war with Germany he could have had it. We were 
in his hands, and no amount of elections, or con- 
stitutional reservations about the right of Congress 
to declare war, can alter the fact that the real 
war-making power in the United States is the 
President. 

Americans have never intended to give any one 
man such importance. They have always believed 
they possessed that democratic control of foreign 
affairs for which European liberals are agitating. 
The United States makes no secret treaties ; the 

treaties it does make have to be ratified by the 

15 



16 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

people's representatives ; and Congress has to agree 
before war can be declared. Yet the real power is 
with the President, and all this constitutional ma- 
chinery counts for practically nothing in a crisis. 
When Mr. Wilson decided to seize Vera Cruz, he 
had to go to Congress for permission. I am told 
on good authority that a large number of the Con- 
gressmen were against the expedition. But they 
" supported " the President ; " politics ceased at 
the water's edge " ; the people's representatives 
voted Mr. Wilson the power he asked. 

Congress was not in session in May, 1915, when 
affairs with Germany were strained to the break- 
ing point. There was some discussion as to 
whether Congress ought to be summoned, and I 
suppose It would have been difficult to find a per- 
son In the country anxious for peace who didn't 
also wish Congress to stay at home. It was a 
curious paradox for those of us who would like 
to believe that democratic institutions make for 
peace. Instead of shouting for the people's repre- 
sentatives to assemble and restrain the autocrat, 
we knew that the mere act of summoning Congress 
would be a threat of war. So certain were we that 
Congress would aggravate the situation that many 



A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 17 

of us debated whether the calling of Congress 
might not be the best way of threatening Germany, 
We never assumed that Congress would make 
things calmer, or that it would force the Presi- 
dent to take a milder course. For as one genial 
cynic remarked : " It is easier to summon Congress 
than to adjourn it; it is easier to open the flood- 
gates of heroic patriotism than to close them." 

The picture of Congress upholding the Presi- 
dent's hands when the situation required that the 
President should lower them a bit; the prospect 
of lavish rhetoric and lavish appropriation, of reso- 
lutions calling on the Secretary of State to ex- 
plain this and furnish information about that, the 
interviews, proposals, and speeches which might be 
let loose, the heat which would be engendered, made 
those of us who hoped for peace prefer to trust 
the cool intentions of Mr. Wilson. 

But it was a curious choice for democrats to 
make, a choice about which we can hardly feel 
very comfortable. What if Mr. Wilson had hap- 
pened to believe that an occasional war was good 
for a country, or that the United States ought to 
seize a decent excuse to intervene in Europe? It is 
useless to pretend that the people in electing the 



18 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

President take care not to choose a man with such 
views. They don't inquire about a candidate's 
philosophy of war, or even about his notions of 
foreign policy. So far as I can recall, Mr. Wil- 
son's campaign speeches made almost no reference 
whatever to international affairs, and even if they 
did, the views he expressed probably did not influ- 
ence two hundred votes. Our Presidents are elected 
by various means ; the deliberate choice even of 
domestic policies plays a small part ; the choice of 
foreign policies enters practically not at all. 

To be sure there are certain traditional views 
on which the parties are supposed to agree and to 
divide. They are supposed to render equal hom- 
age to the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door; 
the Republicans are supposed to be for a " strong " 
foreign policy with a tendency to " expansion " ; 
the Democrats are said to stand for a mild foreign 
policy with a passion for isolation. But as a 
matter of fact each administration makes its own 
interpretation, and fills catch phrases like the 
" Monroe Doctrine " with a meaning of its own. 
Thus the Democrats may deplore the " dollar 
diplomacy " of Mr. Knox and the Taft adminis- 
tration, but Mr. Wilson has proposed a treaty 



A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 19 

with Haiti which, whatever its merits, is built on 
the most approved model of modern economic im- 
perialism. 

Traditional American policy is so vague that 
the administration may subscribe to it and still 
do pretty much whatever it pleases. It is no real 
check on the power of the President. In reality 
it is the great bulwark of his power. A phrase like 
the " Monroe Doctrine " may mean everything or 
nothing in the actual affairs of Central and South 
America, but it means for the American people a 
cluster of loyalties which can be summoned to ac- 
tion. As to all phrases which are sanctioned by 
our habits, the reaction to " Monroe Doctrine " is 
almost automatic. It may cover a totally new 
course of action. In the last ninety years or so 
it has covered many courses of action. But it has 
covered them. Because the covering was familiar, 
the action has been palatable. We have been ready 
to fight in defense of the Monroe Doctrine, leaving 
it for the President to decide what it means. 

It doesn't follow that there is no such thing as 
American public opinion in regard to foreign 
affairs, or the making of war and peace. It does 
follow that we have certain conventional ways 



20 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

of reacting, certain habitual associations about 
phrases, and a number of set loyalties which are 
easily aroused. It would be sheer hypocrisy to 
pretend to more than that, to suppose that any 
large section of the American people is informed, 
or interested, or thoughtful about international 
relations. Our opinion about foreign affairs is 
hardened into a number of molds, named the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, the Open Door, No Entangling Alli- 
ances, and I suppose one should add Peace-if- 
possible. Into these molds patriotism is ready to 
flow; into these molds patriotism can be made to 
flow. The President has enormous power of direct- 
ing that flow. His decision as to what shall be 
published and what concealed is one of the su- 
preme attributes of his oiBce. He has no legal 
power of censoring the news. But often he alone 
knows what the news is, he can publish it when 
and how it seems best to him. The rest of us 
have to make up our minds as well as we can on 
the information which he furnishes us. 

We had trouble with Japan over Califomian 
land laws. The correspondence was published after 
the negotiations. We had some discussion with 
Japan and China over the situation created by the 



A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 21 

fall of Tsing-tao. As I write, the nature of that 
discussion has not been revealed. We have been 
bickering for two years on the edge of Mexican 
intervention, but the real facts about conditions in 
Mexico have been carefully censored and concealed. 
Mr. Wilson has not wished to intervene, and so he 
has not published the alarming reports which must 
have come to him from day to day. But suppose 
he had decided to intervene. What would have 
been easier than to arouse feeling in the United 
States by publishing the news? 

Moreover, the real facts of any diplomatic situ- 
ation are not contained in the official notes. Al- 
most always there is a personal conference between 
the ambassador and the Secretary of State ; some- 
thing is done to give a human tone to the guarded 
language of the document. Diplomats do not 
mumble and stutter as much as their written dis- 
patches make them seem to. They add something 
in conversation intended to lead or mislead. But 
they do not rely on the inexpressive language they 
use when they write to each other. I do not know 
what Mr. Bryan said to the Austrian Ambassador 
after the first note to Germany about the Lusi- 
tania. But he seems to have said something which 



22 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

Ambassador Dumba told the German Foreign 
Office so as to help the German diplomats under- 
stand what the Wilson administration really in- 
tended to do. This personal side of diplomacy 
cannot be published. It may consist merely of an 
inflection in the voice or a gesture of the hand, 
which nevertheless gives the real meaning of a 
document. 

Then, too, every document which is to be pub- 
lished is written with an eye to its publication. 
The diplomat has to consider not only what he 
means, but what different people will think he 
means, and how they will feel about what they 
think he means. All this sounds very Machiavellian 
and not at all democratic, but there is no use pre- 
tending that it doesn't occur. When Mr. Wilson 
said that he was waiting for the American people 
to speak, he undoubtedly meant what he said. He 
knew that the first note to Germany must express 
American feeling about the Lusitania. His first 
note was a kind of national work of art which re- 
lieved our feelings immensely. By the time the 
second note had to be written we were cooler and 
we had counted the cost of war. The second note 
certainly retracted much of the first, but it ex- 



A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 23 

pressed our feeling at the time it was written, and 
public opinion was satisfied. Mr. Wilson may not 
have managed the situation consciously. It may 
be that he himself went through the same change 
of feeling that the rest of us did. But had he set 
out to control opinion, he could not have done it 
more skillfully. He controlled it, not by dominat- 
ing it, but by absorbing it. 

It is possible to say that, after all, American 
public opinion has governed in the crisis with Ger- 
many. I should not deny that. But the point 
I am making is that it was an accident that Mr. 
Wilson felt with a majority rather than a minority 
of the American people. Had he belonged to that 
powerful group in this country who would like to 
fight on the side of the Allies, he could have used 
the Lusitania incident to make war inevitable. 
Nothing would have been easier than to dramatize 
the issue, to close the door of negotiation, to in- 
flame the press by publishing the whispered rumors 
about many of the undoubted provocations which 
German diplomacy has offered us. The raw ma- 
terial of war existed, and the power to work upon 
it was in the hands of the President. 

It is true that we have had no President re- 



24 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

cently who used his power to make war. Those 
wars which the United States has fought have 
been forced upon an unwilHng President. Mr. Mc- 
Kinley not only did not foment, he actually 
opposed the Spanish-American War, and Mr. 
Roosevelt, for all his reputation, kept an unbroken 
peace for the whole term of his office. How, then, 
does it matter that the Executive has this supreme 
power, if in actual fact he has never used it? 
Isn't the question a rather unreal one? 

I think not. The question seems to me impor- 
tant not only because it is part of our preparation 
for future emergencies, but because it reveals with 
a good deal of suggestion the problem of a democ- 
racy and its relation to war. If we can under- 
stand why in our republic such great power has 
gravitated to one man, why in spite of all our pre- 
tensions to democracy we have happened to give 
over the greatest question of all to the decision of 
one man, if we can explain the curious fact that 
those of us who believe in democracy preferred to 
trust Mr. Wilson in the Lusitania crisis, we shall, 
I believe, have learned something of considerable 
value. 

We have just passed through — indeed at the/ 



A DISCOVERY FOR DEMOCRATS 25" 

moment it is still optimistic to say that we have 
passed through — one of the gravest episodes of 
our history. In a way it illuminated as nothing 
else would have done the question of how democ- 
racies face the issue of war. To our surprise and 
humiliation some of us discovered that our desire 
for peace and our faith in democratic institutions 
conflicted. We had to choose between them, and 
if we have won peace, it is by an abandonment of 
the pretense that the people could control their 
foreign relations in any positive way. We trusted 
a President who was elected before the submarine 
war was dreamed of, and as it happened he turned 
out to be a man who wanted peace. But it was 
such a hair-raising escape, so replete with accident, 
that we are compelled, in self-respect, to search 
out the meaning of the discovery that on the issue 
of our national existence we are not a self-govern- 
ing people. 



CHAPTER II 

THE USES OF A KING 

The reason why we trust one man, rather than 
many, is because one man can negotiate and many 
men can't. Two masses of people have no way 
of dealing directly with each other. They have 
to deal through representatives. It is a pure fic- 
tion to speak of negotiations between the United 
States and Germany. For when you look around 
to find the " United States " you discover a hun- 
dred million people spread over vast territory, 
with certain common habits, ideas, and loyalties, 
but nowhere do you find anything called the 
*' United States " which can strike a bargain with 
** Germany.'* The American people cannot all 
seize the same pen and indite a note to sixty-five 
million people living within the German Empire. 
They cannot say : We ask for this, but if you will 
grant that, we'll do so-and-so, and then we'll both 
be satisfied. Each man may know what he thinks 
(a tremendous assumption), but what "we the 

26 



THE USES OF A KING 27 

American people " think is one of the most diffi- 
cult matters in the world to find out. 

We all try to find it out. The papers print edi- 
torial comment from different parts of the coun- 
try, they interview leaders of opinion, publish let- 
ters from correspondents, take straw ballots, and 
ask questions in the smoking-room of the club, on 
the street car, and at the quick-lunch counter. 
They may throw some light on the general reaction 
to a particular event. But more accurate than 
this it is hardly possible to be. The " will " 
and " mind " and " voice " of a great people are 
not the same thing as the will and mind and voice 
of a single man. When an individual thinks out a 
course of action, he goes through a delicate mental 
operation, a good part of which is unconscious. 
But a whole people can no more think in unison 
than it can make love in unison. The individual 
thinks, and you may, if you are fond of abstrac- 
tions, say that the common thoughts, or the domi- 
nating thoughts of a mass of individuals, are their 
will and mind. 

But in saying it you are opening the door to 
great self-deception. The moment you assume 
that there is a collective soul, a collective heart, 



28 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

and a collective mind, you are falling into that old 
error of statecraft which obsesses men like Bem- 
hardi. It is the error of treating a nation as an 
individual, rather than as a group of people. I 
call it an error because as a matter of observation 
that which we call the thought of a nation is very 
different from the thought of a person. The 
nation has no eyes, ears, or mouth. Its " will " is 
compounded of many wills, and when it speaks it 
speaks through a person. That person may have 
taken into account what other persons think and 
feel, but the words he utters are at the utmost 
somebody's notion of what most people would like 
to have said. 

It is often stated that the public is " fickle " ; 
that its interest fades quickly, or is easily diverted. 
This is natural enough, for a great people is very 
diverse; it has innumerable interests which com- 
pete for the attention, and it cannot give itself 
as devotedly to one object as the individual may. 
But from the point of view of diplomatic negotia- 
tion, it is far truer to say that a mass of people 
is really much too inflexible for successful dealing. 
One diplomat can find out that he was wrong, and 
change his mind; a whole people unlearns very 



THE USES OF A KING 29 

slowly. One diplomat may see what is in the 
other diplomat's mind, and tune his utterance ac- 
cordingly ; a whole people cannot see quickly into 
another people's mind, and its utterance is inevi- 
tably crude. The very qualities which are needed 
for negotiation — quickness of mind, direct contact, 
adaptiveness, invention, the right proportion of 
give and take — are the very qualities which masses 
of people do not possess. This isn't entirely due 
to the ignorance of masses ; it is a question of 
inertia. A large body of highly trained scientists 
by the sheer fact of its size would show much the 
same heaviness of movement. This inertia, which 
means a tendency to stay where you are put, or 
to keep moving when you start, is natural to all 
large bodies. It is as much a problem for the 
traffic policeman as for the statesman. 

The only large groups of people which have real 
mobility are highly trained troops. They come as 
near to the ideal of one heart, one mind, and one 
movement, as masses of people ever do. They 
achieve it by automatic obedience, by as complete 
an annihilation of the individual as discipline can 
produce. But even years of training and subordi- 
nation will not give to an army anything like the 



30 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

resourcefulness of a clever group of free-moving 
bandits. 

An army, however, is the outside limit of uni- 
formity for masses. It has something of a common 
mind and will, because it has sacrificed almost 
completely individual mind and will. There are 
few freethinkers in well-drilled armies, and they 
are likely to be shot. But a civil population, even 
with the most vigorous school system and press 
censorship, is a straggling and varied collection 
of people. And in our democracy, where the fron- 
tier tradition is not yet dead, there is no possibility 
of anything like drilled and concerted action. 

Even if there were, it would not enable a whole 
people to negotiate. We might all think alike 
when we thought, but it is a physical impossibility 
that we should all know the same facts at the same 
moment. The best we can do is to express gen- 
eral sentiments, allow a leader or a President to 
translate them into action, and then see whether 
most of us like what he has done for us. We are 
a little like the customer who can say yes or no to 
what is offered by the salesman, but who cannot de- 
scribe exactly what he wants. 

The whole difficulty can be visualized by imagin- 



THE USES OF A KING SI 

ing the situation between two nations which had no 
diplomats and no government. One nation tries 
to tell the other that it is outraged by the sinking 
of the Lusitania. The American newspapers print 
editorials which are telegraphed to the German 
newspapers and reprinted. The German writers 
then proceed to write their thoughts. One of them 
— perhaps Count von Reventlow — says proudly : 
" Damn the Americans." Another who has just 
read the Evening Telegram says : " My God, what 
liars those Americans are." Another reads a de- 
fense of the sinking in the Fatherland and says: 
" They are a reasonable people, those Americans. 
Gott strafe England." Another editor discovers 
that most Americans are angry, and writes a long, 
reasonable editorial asking : " What does America 
want.''" All this is cabled back to us, slightly 
mangled in translation. Our editors proceed to 
answer. Some tell von Reventlow what they think 
of him; others tell the New York Evening Tele- 
gram what they think of it. Some say the Ger- 
mans are in a compromising frame of mind ; others 
say we have been insulted. 

It would not be long before the sensible people 
in both countries were shouting that if only each 



S2 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

nation could appoint somebody who really was 
fitted to speak for it, there would be some pos- 
sibility of getting somewhere. The sheer problem 
of exchanging ideas, formulating demands, and 
making compromises would have demonstrated 
more clearly than any amount of theorizing that 
the " national mind and will " must negotiate 
through some person. It was a recognition of this 
that made the most democratic among us prefer 
" trusting the President " to summoning Congress 
in the Lusitania crisis. We believed he could do 
for us what we wanted done better than we could 
tell him what we wanted done. It was a situation 
in which the people desired certain results — abate- 
ment of submarine warfare and peace, but for the 
intricate business of obtaining those results they 
saw that the flexibility of one mind was superior to 
the inertia of many. It was the explanation of 
the paradox that a democracy was willing to grant 
onp man plenary power over war and peace. 

In the diplomatic exchanges at the end of July, 
1914*, there was a very illuminating example of 
the danger to all negotiation when a nation has not 
granted its diplomats full power. It will be remem- 
bered that Sir Edward Grey was asked repeatedly 



THE USES OF A KING 2S 

by Sazonof and Cambon to state where England 
would stand in case of war. He replied that he 
could not promise intervention without a grant 
from Parliament. That hesitancy of his was un- 
doubtedly sincere, but it made all the negotiations 
immensely difficult. No one was certain what Eng- 
land would do, and the complaint of Germans that 
England fell upon them has that much foundation. 
Sir Edward Grey represented a somewhat uncer- 
tain democracy dealing with powers governed by 
men who had full authority. They knew what 
they could do; he didn't. They could threaten, 
promise, and bargain; Sir Edward Grey never 
knew how much he could count upon the support 
of his nation. He was, in other words, a limited 
delegate negotiating with plenipotentiaries. The 
full force of the Empire was not behind him, and 
he was not the equal of the men he was dealing 
with. 

I don't mean to suggest that war could have been 
avoided if Sir Edward Grey had been freer to com- 
mit himself at the end of July. I think it is argu- 
able that Germany would have hesitated had she 
known as an absolute certainty that England would 
be drawn in. But it is clear at least that the com- 



34 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

plete power of England could not be exerted in 
the negotiations, because the ultimate power lay 
with Parliament. 

Some such reasoning as this is what makes the 
traditional diplomat shy of democratic control of 
foreign affairs. His idea is to wield the power of 
his nation as a rapier. He does not wish foreign 
affairs made the subject of party politics. He 
prefers secrecy ; he desires above all other things 
to face foreign diplomats with the assurance that 
a united people is behind him. We in America 
have accepted this diplomatic ideal. For us " poli- 
tics ceases at the water's edge " ; we announce in 
" one " voice that we shall act as " one " man ; 
and in a crisis we resent with peculiar intolerance 
the opposition of anybody to the government's 
policy. It is called " rocking the boat," and the 
epithet " treason " trembles on the tip of the edi- 
torial pen. We feel that division at home is weak- 
ness abroad. Though there are a hundred million 
of us with differing opinions, though we profess to 
value liberty of thought and action, we are deeply 
hostile to any use of this liberty when the question 
of war and peace is at issue. 

In other words, it is not only politics which 



THE USES OF A KING 35 

ceases at the water's edge, but democracy too. 
The moment we are dealing with a foreign people, 
a totally new conception of government appears. 
We ask to be led by a man to whom we give su- 
preme power. We form behind him and obey. We 
try to forget all our differences ; we drop conten- 
tious issues, declare a truce, and make every effort 
to be unanimous. We believe that unanimity 
should be purchased at almost any price — if neces- 
sary at the price of our deepest convictions. " My 
country right or wrong," and no reservations al- 
lowed. Free criticism disappears, a great same- 
ness descends upon the minds of men. In it we feel 
the premonition of war — that hardening of nerve 
and body, that awful concentration which iS^a na- 
tion's power. 

It is deeper than all reason. The sense of an 
enemy makes us huddle together for defense and 
offense. The psychologists of war are right. We 
forget ourselves, our ambitions, our ideas, our lives. 
No one in time of peace can imagine the change 
which external danger brings. That is why no one 
can understand how commonplace is courage. 
Clerks who were timid about asking for a half- 
holiday face machine-guns. War, or the sense of 



S6 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

war, does indeed bring that simplification of the 
spirit which its eulogists glorify. It almost ob- 
literates personality, and throws us back into a 
herd with animal loves and animal hates. Some 
call it an unimaginably great experience. A young 
German girl whose husband fell at Ypres wrote to 
me of " Zeiten unendlich gross." She had forgot- 
ten herself, him, her baby, her future. She was 
welded into the power of Germany, as the fingers 
are welded into a clenched fist. 

Our instincts are not different from hers. In 
every essential respect we believe that external 
danger requires complete and submissive unity. 
Patriotism, then, means that a hundred million 
people shall fuse so that no division is visible from 
the outside. We secure external strength by inner 
harmony. That is the diplomatic and military 
value of unanimity. Danger requires us to be as 
" one man." But it obscures with a horrible 
shadow the differences of many men out of which 
is born the curiosity of civilized life. 

External danger makes us revert from the demo- 
cratic to the dynastic conception of the state. 
When we become " one man," we become so in the 
same sense that Germany personifies itself in the 



THE USES OF A KING $7 

Emperor, or England in the Crown. The " one 
man " that danger fuses us into is not a living 
person named William Hohenzollern, but it serves 
the same purpose. For when sovereignty passed 
from the monarch to the people, it did not lose its 
character. The sovereign people in its dealing with 
foreign powers has not ceased to be dynastic. The 
virtue of kings, their morality, their honor, and 
many of their ambitions remain in this new sov- 
ereign — the people acting as " one man." Foreign 
affairs are in fact the last stronghold of court 
etiquette and royal tradition. In their dealings 
with foreign powers, even republics act as mon- 
archs, because they have enthroned the people in- 
stead of destroying the throne. 



CHAPTER III 

FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 

When a family quarrels, the hostilities are not 
regarded as worthy of public notice until there is 
what people call a " break." The husband rushes 
off to his saloon or his club, slamming the door 
behind him ; the wife takes to her room, slamming 
the door behind her. Then lawyers can be engaged, 
the friends and relatives can line up, and disorderly 
friction is turned into an orderly battle. When 
civil war breaks out in a country, no real fighting 
is possible until the contending factions are or- 
ganized on separate territory. The more compact 
the two territories are, the more cleanly they divide 
a country, the better for the fighting, the nearer 
the whole business is to a real war. Two popula- 
tions cannot fight successfully if they are entirely 
interlaced. Our own Civil War was one of the 
completest wars in history because the North and 
the South were not only pretty clearly divided in 
territory, they were separate in their culture and 

38 



FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 39 

tradition. Unless you can find some territorial 
division upon which to base political differences, it 
is impossible to turn civil war into anything more 
than a riot. A frontier is necessary to organized 
fighting. 

Experience with the industrial struggle bears 
this out. The strikes which have produced large 
violence always take place in regions where labor 
and capital can really pair off'. In the bloody West 
Virginia struggle, the miners were in gullies and 
on the slopes of the mountains ; the operators and 
their agents did not live in the same community 
with them. When you find a town or a county 
completely devoted to one industry, with the own- 
ers living in another city, there you have the mak- 
ings of civil war. This was the case in Colorado 
and in Calumet. The segregation of the two 
sides makes possible a real line-up of fighting 
forces. But in a highly complicated city each 
side is diluted by the presence of those neutrals who 
constitute what is called the public, and a long, 
bitter, fighting strike is far less possible. There 
are no frontiers behind which to organize a class 
war. 

That is why governments can indulge in supreme 



40 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

violence. The opponent is an alien, and the ter- 
ritorial division is as strategically perfect as 
diplomacy can make it. Two nations don't have 
to " break " as a family does ; they are already 
" broken " and proud of it. They don't have to 
improvise frontiers as revolutionists do. They 
don't have to contend with the same amount of 
corrosive neutral opinion. When you start a civil 
war, you never know how much the interlacing 
of classes and interests will spoil your plans ; but 
in an international war every impulse of patriot- 
ism works to cut the cross-frontier loyalties and 
solidify the populations. The more perfect the 
spiritual division of the two nations the better is 
their military morale. 

It is no accident that the eulogists of war, the 
jingoes, the aggressive nationalists, and pug- 
nacious people generally, are at the same time the 
devotees of Pure Races, and the implacable enemies 
of mixed populations, or loose and tolerant states. 
A varied population is a weakness in war, espe- 
cially if it lives in a country free enough to allow 
the different peoples civil equality. Once you fill a 
territory with a population mixed in its sympathies 
you destroy that unity which successful war re- 



FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 41 

quires. It would be easier for the United States 
to fight Japan than Germany ; it was a very ticklish 
business for the Bdtish Empire, with its large Mo- 
hammedan population, to fight the Turks. The 
great variety of the Empire makes war difficult, 
for the enemy's friends and spiritual relations are 
likely to be its own citizens. That is why military 
men are not fond of tolerance. They are almost 
always ready to sanction racial oppression — to 
Russify, Germanize, Magyarize, or Anglicize if 
possible. I don't mean to say that the military 
authorities always initiate racial intolerance. The 
causes of that lie deeper. But they will generally 
support it for the best of professional reasons. 
To them an alien culture is a potential enemy 
within the gates, and so offensive power abroad is 
likely to be accompanied by intolerance and op- 
pression at home. 

I once heard the most important officer in the 
American army argue for military preparedness. 
He addressed us as young men of a " class which 
had something to lose," and before he had finished 
his speech had referred to the need for troops who 
could " shoot to kill " in a strike, had described 
Ellis Island as a " human sewer," and laid some 



!12 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

pretty insult upon the " niggers." He is regarded 
as an unusually cultivated officer, and he was ap- 
pealing to us as good Americans. It never oc- 
curred to him that he was a traitor to the very 
Americanism for which a civilized person might 
lay down his life. I understood Zabern then, 
and the revolt of the British army officers in 
Ulster; I understood why liberals the world over 
are so much afraid of militarism. 

The true ideal of the military man is necessarily 
a solidified population. If he advocates anything 
else, it is because his democratic citizenship has 
weakened him. For his whole training prejudices 
him in favor of obedience and uniformity, making 
him instinctively unfriendly to tolerant govern- 
ments and varied populations. The military tradi- 
tion is also suspicious of commercial life. No se- 
verer denunciation of sordid business can be read 
than in the utterances of officers. They often in- 
sist that commerce is ignoble; they will contrast 
the sacrifice of the soldier with the selfishness of the 
trader, and many of them say that war is a holy 
thing just because it calls out so many non-com- 
mercial qualities. 

This feeling appears most candidly in a book hy. 



FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 43 

the Gennan Crown Prince called Deutschland in 
Wajfen — (Germany in Arms). He writes: 

" Since the last big war Germany has passed 
through a period of economic development, which has 
something disconcerting about it. The standard of 
living has risen so much for all classes of our peo- 
ple, that the demands for necessities and luxuries 
have grown considerably. Certainly one ought not 
ungratefully to deny that a higher economic de- 
velopment does much good. But the dark sides of 
this too quick development appear painfully and 
threateningly in many ways. Already the desire 
for money has taken hold of us with such strength, 
that one can only contemplate it with anxiety. . . . 
The old ideals — even the pride and the honor of the 
nation may be sympathetically affected; for to make 
money without disturbance, peace is required, peace 
at any price." 

A democrat might say that to cure the evils of 
commercialism by precipitating war was like burn- 
ing down the house to roast the pig. But he had 
better reserve his comment, and try to understand. 
The opposition of the military idealist is not alone 
to the evils of commercialism; it governs all his 
social theories. Fighting men are not only afraid 
of confused populations ; they are inclined to 
oppose the specialization of international trade. 



44 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

They would prefer, for obvious military reasons, 
to have a country self-sufficient within its own 
borders. Thus the military party in Germany 
has been in alliance with the agrarians in their 
long struggle against industry. These men saw 
truly according to their lights. The Germans are 
a better fighting people, better able to withstand 
British sea power because the Junkers dominated 
their domestic policy. The more a country de- 
velops its export trade, the more it lives by ex- 
change with other nations, the greai^er is the 
difficulty of waging war. And if there must be 
export trade, the war party will clamor for a mer- 
chant marine to carry it and a navy large enough 
to protect it. 

To men who think in terms of national conflict, 
the plight of the United States with its shipping 
controlled by England is an actual menace to our 
" independence." We have given a hostage to 
fortune, as all cooperators must. And every time 
these people read that New York is becoming the 
money center of the world their hearts rejoice. 
They are indefatigable separatists, and the spec- 
tacle of nations so bound together that war is 
almost an impossibility is a vision which frightens 



FOREIGNERS AND FRONTIERS 45 

them. They know that world-wide markets are 
corroding frontiers, creating supemational group- 
ings, and mixing the populations. But their ideal 
calls for a " pure " race, a single nationality, 
strategic frontiers, a unanimous people, and a self- 
sufficing industrial system. No wonder they shake 
their heads. The process of fusion has gone so far 
that war itself has ceased to be a national enter- 
prise. The separate sovereignties have been partly 
merged into alliances. 

It would be a great mistake, however, to over- 
estimate either the intermixture of people or the 
erosion of frontiers. The process is very young 
to-day, and it has not gone very deep. On the 
whole, nations still live on their own territory, sur- 
rounded by frontiers over which few people ever 
look. Inside those frontiers they have abolished 
many smaller ones and ended many old sacred 
states' rights. Within these areas some democ 
racy can prevail. But when two organized lands 
deal with each other, they are dealing with for- 
eigners, each focused into a sovereignty and there- 
fore run not on the democratic but on the dynastic 
principle. They settle differences by negotiation 
or by war. 



46 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

For these their internal democracy is an actual 
weakness, and so the most advanced republics are 
autocratic in the management of foreign affairs. 
They are autocratic because democracy can never 
deal with an affair that is " foreign." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 

Because a whole people clamors for a war, and 
gets it, there is no ground for calling the war 
democratic. One might just as well call the sub- 
jection of negroes democratic because the whole 
white South desires it, or acquiesce in the oppres- 
sion of Slavs because the Magyars are united in 
its favor. The mere fact that a whole mass of 
people is unanimous doesn't make their decision a 
democratic one. This isn't because democracies 
are not capable of evil, or because I as a democrat 
would prefer to call whatever I don't like undemo- 
cratic. It is because a thing can be popular and 
still lack the very essence of democracy. Kings, 
lynchings, and crusades can be popular, but they 
are not democratic because the interests of all 
groups concerned have not entered into the making 
of them. Democracy is a meaningless word unless 

it signifies that differences of opinion have been 

47 



48 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

expressed, represented, and even satisfied in the 
decision. 

But in the relation of governments, the opposi- 
tions live on two sides of a frontier. When there 
is an issue to be settled, each side formulates its 
demands — expresses what it regards as its vital 
interest — and calls that its sovereign will. The two 
diplomats who actually speak for the sovereign 
will start with the infatuation that whatever they 
say has a peculiar sanctity. To be tentative, ex- 
perimental, flexible, to be human and sensible in 
their dealings, is not compatible with complete sov- 
ereignty. They are haunted by the ghost of a 
king, who held his power by divine grace and was 
inclined to regard his opinions as infallible. These 
older habits of mind survive in the relations of 
governments long after they have perished in the 
relations of men. Within our borders we may be 
a commonwealth; we try to face the world as a 
sovereign. That is why international morality is 
so unlike private morality. Nations hold to the 
theory that they are sovereign — which comes pretty 
close to meaning that they can do no wrong. They 
have a " right " to organize violence, a " right " 
to refuse arbitration, a " right " to follow their 



THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 49 

own " interests." There may be a few conventions 
of honor or expediency which they won't violate, 
but their obedience is part of their sovereign will, 
an accidental decency in the midst of their supreme 
pretensions. 

In other words, there are sections of the globe 
marked off by frontiers. Within those sections 
live masses of people organized in governments. 
Some of these governments exist by consent, others 
by choice, others by hereditary power. In theory 
these governments are all of them sovereign, and 
anything they desire or ask for is judged not on 
its merits alone. The opinions of a sovereign have 
a mystical importance. They are easily identified 
with the opinions of God, and it is hard for God to 
back down. 

The curious thing is that the inhabitants of a 
country rarely dispute the external sovereignty of 
their government. They may know as a matter of 
bitter experience that their rulers are a corrupt, 
stupid, reactionary group of men. But when those 
rulers speak to a foreign people, these opinions 
acquire an almost supernatural importance. They 
become the " national will," and men will be 
maimed, and starved, and frozen, and killed for 



50 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

them. It seems as if foreign politics tapped deeper 
levels of habit and instinct than domestic affairs. 
They are notoriously less reasonable, more touchy, 
and more inflammable. Men think less about them 
and sacrifice more for them. They blur personality 
and education, and evoke buried loyalties and an- 
cient pugnacity. 

Now in a consideration of the differences between 
the psychology of domestic and of foreign politics, 
the most striking difference appears to be this: 
In domestic affairs we live with and know the men 
who disagree with us ; in foreign affairs the oppo- 
sition lives behind a frontier, and probably speaks 
a different language. Simple and obvious as this 
sounds, the consequences are enormous. Thus when 
a nation crystallizes its feelings, it does so prac- 
tically unopposed. The average man meets al- 
most nobody who disagrees with him. It is like 
being in the old solid South where men lived and 
died without ever having met anyone who wasn't a 
Democrat. The people all know what their gov- 
ernment permits them to know, and the habit of 
imitation is uncorrected — ^the state of feeling 
grows by its sheer unanimity until disagreement 
becomes positively dangerous. All the people we 



THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 51 

know think alike — people who disagree about every- 
thing else agree about our relation to the for- 
eigner. Of course, such an opinion acquires sanc- 
tity, seems supreme, and takes on the airs of a 
sovereign. It is like the opinion of an only child — 
being the only opinion in his universe, he defies 
anyone to thwart it. And the person who does 
thwart it seems very wicked indeed. All our pas- 
sion runs freely into our demands, is " let loose " 
because it is not civilized by opposition. 

In fact, opposition is about the only incentive 
we have to practice reason and tolerance. Unless 
our ideas are questioned, they become part of the 
furniture of eternity. It is only by incessant 
criticism, by constant rubbing in of differences, 
that any of our ideas remain human and decent. 
The easy way is when we are not opposed. That 
enables us to be dogmatic, and to regard whatever 
we happen to believe as of sovereign value. 

To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to a 
monastery. Where all think alike, no one thinks 
very much. But whatever he does think, he can 
think with all his soul. It is at the cross-roads 
that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage. With- 
out contact and friction, without experience, in 



52 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

short, our animal loyalties are supreme. Thought 
is not made in a vacuum, nor created out of like- 
ness. It requires travel and shipping and the com- 
ing and going of strangers to impregnate a civiliza- 
tion. That is why thought has flourished in cities 
which lie along the paths of communication. 
\ Nineveh, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, the 
Hansa towns, London, Paris — they have made 
ideas out of the movement and contact of many 
people. Men are jostled into thought. Left alone 
they spin the same thread from the same dream. 
A community which is self-contained and homo- 
geneous and secluded is intellectually deaf, dumb, 
and blind. It can cultivate robust virtue and sim- 
ple dogmatism, but it will not invent or throw out 
a profusion of ideas. 

In places where men are used to differences 
they inevitably become tolerant. Within modem 
communities this rubbing together of diff^erences 
has gone far enough to cover most political strife 
with a decent humanity. But there are some 
clashes even within a country which are fought 
upon a different plane. Where workingmen are 
new immigrants and live almost completely shut 
off from the rest of the people, wherever class 



THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 5$ 

division is very acute, there the industrial struggle 
is fought with special bitterness. Each side is 
dogmatic and simple-minded ; there is not enough 
contact and experience to produce much thought. 
Each side attributes sovereignty to its opinions, 
and feels very exalted about them. 

When we deal with a foreign people, our passion 
is not diluted by opposition. We are consequently 
not in the least sicklied o'er by the pale cast of 
thought, and neither conscience nor consciousness 
makes cowards of us. Ideas which are agreed to by 
everyone we know, ideas which are sanctioned by 
all the authorities we have ever followed, are sov- 
ereign ideas. They have a weight which no do- 
mestic opinion can have. Just because we have 
had no incentive to doubt them, we cannot see why 
they should be contradicted. To disagree with 
them, then, is to attack us, to deny our right to 
sovereignty. In this sense all wars are defensive. 
They defend our desire to be unopposed. 

What is called " jingoism " finds a butt in the 
foreigner simply because a " foreigner " is a per- 
son you don't live with, don't meet, about whom 
you are naive, who remains alien and opaque, who 
doesn't stimulate different ideas or create the com- 



54 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

plexity of feeling which is the atmosphere of rea- 
son. Nobody pleads the foreigner's cause very 
strenuously. It is difficult, requiring much in- 
formation and much courage. Moreover, it is a 
thankless task which almost always evokes tribal 
suspicion. The peacemaker is easily identified 
with the alien, as Lord Haldane has been identified 
with the Germans. He is " against his own coun- 
try," which means that he is trying to correct the 
passionate trend of his fellow-citizens. His ideas 
are rarely judged on their merits, because they 
rest on knowledge with which the community is 
not at home. 

It is small wonder that newspapers are in the 
main instruments of irritation between peoples. I 
leave out of account here the deliberately pacifist 
press as well as the reptile press of the war parties. 
It is the ordinary middle-class newspapers which I 
have in mind, the papers run as commercial enter- 
prises. With all their faults admitted, no one can 
possibly assert that their owners are criminal 
enough to provoke war. Yet in almost every crisis 
the tension is increased by the newspapers. 

The reason is in part that war is more sensa- 
tional than peace — the possibility of conflict is a 



THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 55 

cheaper and more obvious form of news. It is 
hard to conceive of a newspaper breaking out into 
lurid headlines to announce in time of peace that 
*' good will between Japan and the United States 
is on the increase." It would sound silly. The 
press cannot shout about the aggression that will 
not take place, or announce with joy the markets 
that are not coveted. Indeed, any attempt to do 
it would be regarded as suspicious. Men would 
say that the news was intended to conceal some- 
thing. No one has discovered a way of making 
good will, harmony, reasonableness, easily dra- 
matic. In overwhelming measure the news of 
the day is the news of trouble and conflict. Those 
journals which devote themselves to telling of 
the real advances of mankind — the technological 
progress, the administrative triumphs, the con- 
quests of prejudice — are not popular. They lack 
the "punch." 

To this condition of news-reporting, interna- 
tional affairs have to conform. As the negotia- 
tions of governments are conducted with loaded 
weapons at hand, and with the pretension to sov- 
ereignty by both sides, almost any international 
situation contains news of trouble. At the same 



56 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

time the editor is publishing his paper for a com- 
munity in which the opposition is probably not 
represented. It is easy and natural for him to take 
a " strong " stand. A " strong " stand is the 
least dangerous, for it flatters everybody, produces 
an exhilarating sense of importance, risks no of- 
fense to any significant section of his readers. A 
** weak " stand, a reasonable, complicated desire 
for adjustment, is a costly and thankless task for 
an editor. It means that he appeals to thought 
which is pale rather than to lusts which are strong. 
He appears academic, mugwumpish, unmanly. 
And though it requires the highest kind of courage 
to run against patriotic sentiment, he is likely to 
be called a coward. 

Sympathy for foreigners is the most disinter- 
ested and civilized form of sympathy. It is not 
difficult to understand why editors display so little 
of it. There is almost no incentive to understand 
foreign peoples. They are distant. They speak 
a foreign language. They do not often reward 
their friends in another land. At home, the editor 
faces the fact that ignorance and distrust of the 
alien is the most natural and the cheapest channel 
into which high passion and united feeling can 



THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE 57 

flow. It is the greatest object of uncorrected en- 
thusiasm, the greatest drama in which the villain is 
neither an advertiser nor a reader of the news- 
paper. It is one field of interest where people are 
at once unanimous and excited, and not many edi- 
tors have the strength to resist cultivating that 
field. Then, too, the editor is himself a member 
of the community subject to the same influences. 
He is a good American or a good Britisher, some- 
times a somewhat professionally good patriot. In 
following the easiest way, which is the way of irri- 
tation, he is not guilty of any malevolent plan. 
He does it with a good conscience, for the human 
conscience is never so much at ease as when it 
follows the line of least resistance. Only saints, 
heroes, and specialists in virtue feel remorse be- 
cause they have done what everybody was doing 
and agreed with what everybody was thinking. 



CHAPTER V 
PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 

"And the man removed from his country has torn 
from his shoulders the net of human relationship 
wherein he might have learnt love, which so greatly 
fortifies the will to live. Never will he be knit to 
many people by laughter over local jokes, never 
will he join with strangers in the shamelessly un- 
tuneful singing of old songs about past national 
glories. . . . Only in one's own country is the rose 
of life planted where one would have it, shaped as 
far as could be by the will of one's own people, 
nourished by one's own blood." — From an article on 
" Redemption and Dostoevsky," by Rebecca West — 
published in The New Republic, July 10, 1915. 

" And yet, when one attempts to define ' a nation,' 
one finds the definition impossible. Language, race, 
geographical area, past history, manners and customs, 
origins, religions, ideals, all enter into its realization. 
But ultimately one is obliged to fall back upon the 
assertion that a nation exists where its component 
atoms believe it to be a nation; where they are will- 
ing to live for and to die for a mystical entity whose 
life includes the lives of all the individuals, but whose 
life transcends the lives of those individuals." — The 
Nation (London), June 26, 1915. 

To Robert E. Lee the mystical entity was not 
the United States but Virginia ; to many Canadians 
and Australians to-day the mystical entity is 
that quarter of the human race which is organized 

58 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 59 

in the British Empire. Once there were about 
three hundred mystical entities on German terri- 
tory, each with its local jokes and old songs sung 
out of tune. But the local jokes have of late em- 
braced the railway to Bagdad, and the old songs 
were heard in Kiao-Chow. Men lived and died for 
that mystical entity known as the fortress of 
Tsing-tao with its hinterland of coal mines. And 
yet I take it that this inflated national sentiment 
is in origin the same as the love of Mecklenburg- 
Schwerin or the intense pride of the inhabitants of 
Kokomo, Indiana. * 

There is a famous piece of practical wisdom fre- 
quently oiFered to young men from small towns. 
" It is better," the saying goes, " to be it in Mid- 
dleburg than nit in New York." It is also easier, 
not only because there are less people in Middle- 
burg, but because, as Rebecca West says in the 
passage quoted at the head of this chapter, only 
in Middleburg is the rose of life planted where 
one would have it, shaped as far as could be by the 
will of one's own people, nourished by one's own 
blood. 

Nationality is a word from the Latin. It de- 
notes birth. But quite naturally it has come to 



60 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

mean something more than physical birth. It 
covers our first loyalty, our first impressions, our 
earliest associations. It is at bottom a cluster of 
primitive feelings, absorbed into a man and rooted 
within him long before conscious education begins. 
The house, the street, the meadow and hill upon 
which he first opened his eyes, the reactions to 
family and strangers which remain as types of 
his loves and hates, the earliest sounds which 
brought fear and pleasure — these are the stuff out 
of which nationality is made. They constitute the 
ultimate background of the mind, its first culture 
and the most tenacious one. What comes after is. 
a compromise with this infantile accumulation. It 
modifies, and is modified by it. But in the open- 
ing environment the directions of taste and 
prejudice are given, each person takes on his " na- 
tional " character. His subtlest bents are deter- 
mined, a pervasive flavor is given to his spirit, he 
learns loves and hates that are never altogether 
forgotten. His childish prayers are always a 
little nearer to his heart than any other; the lan- 
guage of his nursery is the speech of his soul. It 
may be buried under much later experience, forgot- 
ten perhaps beyond easy recall. But it does not 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 61 

perish. It is the form of his most obscure impulse, 
the original quality of his mind. 

In time of easy prosperity we are very little 
aware of it. We seem to live in the superficial 
layers of character. But when war breaks out, or 
threatening uncertainty, there is a swift retreat 
into our origins. We become intensely aware of 
the earliest things with which we were associated ; 
we love the security where we were bom, we huddle 
to the people with whom we played as children ; the 
gods grown old in our skeptical maturity live again 
to comfort us, the ancient battles we thrilled over, 
the old pretensions that made us exalt, become once 
more the active substance of our minds. The past 
that is warm with our childish loyalty, the alleys 
and the rookeries where we first met the world, 
are transfigured in memory. They are us, more 
poignant than recent attachments, deeper than all 
later theories. Whatever conflicts with them 
breaks down. We cannot imagine anything to be 
right or worthy which these dumb affections do not 
sanction. 

" We can see for the first time," said Mr. Lloyd 
George recently, " the fundamental things that 
matter in life and that have been obscured from our 



62 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

vision by the tropical growth of prosperity." The 
fundamental things in life are just these earliest 
loyalties, for they seem to survive the breakage of 
everything else. When they go in some over- 
whelming panic, man disintegrates into an animal 
striving to preserve a life that his deepest loyalties 
will prevent him from enjoying. That is what 
cowardice is, a kind of brute disavowal of those 
early associations which no man can have dis- 
avowed and live at ease. Lord Jim did it in Con- 
rad's novel, and he suffered as all people do who 
have poisoned the sources of their being. 

What is called pride of race is the sense that 
our origins are worthy of respect. It is hard for 
a freed slave to be happy ; it is hard for a bastard 
to avoid that furtiveness which dogs the soul. Man 
must be at peace with the sources of his life. If 
he is ashamed of them, if he is at war with them, 
thej*^ will haunt him forever. They will rob him of 
the basis of assurance, leave him an interloper in 
the world. When we speak of thwarted nationality 
like that of the Irish, the Jb»6, the Poles, the 
Negroes, we mean something more intimate than 
political subjection. We mean a kind of homeless- 
ness upon the planet, a homelessness which houses 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 63 

of brick can obscure but never remedy. We mean 
that the origins upgn which strength feeds and 
from which loyalty rises — that the origins of these 
denationalized people have been hurt. They are 
the children ,oi a broken household, and they are 
never altogether free. They are never quite sure 
of themselves. This uncertainty may take many 
forms. It may issue in futile dreams and high- 
sounding visions of a past that is irrevocable or of 
a future that is impossible. It may issue in that 
over-assurance which is so often the mask of 
shyness. 

Since the war began, the Germans in America 
have suffered acutely the pains of denationaliza- 
tion. Almost overnight a burst of hate was let 
loose upon the Fatherland. The place where they 
were bom was proclaimed to be barbarous. They 
were practically called upon to denounce Germany 
or to be denounced themselves. The country to 
which their earliest memories were attached had 
become a moral outlaw. Of course, they couldn't 
believe it. It was the scene of their childhood. It 
was the home of their parents and childish games ; 
reason and evidence could make no impression upon 
what their hearts told them was warm. At the 



64 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

same time they had a newer attachment to America, 
the scene of their ambitions. A more cruel choice 
was never offered to any body of people. The 
result we know — an instinctive devotion to Ger- 
many and a theoretical devotion to America. The 
hyphen was a cut between their dumb but deepest 
affections and their conscious duties. Their 
spiritual life has been a terrible torment to them, 
and their efforts to find a decent compromise be- 
tween their childhood patriotism and their mature 
citizenship has been grotesque when it wasn't 
pathetic. 

They have tried every kind of ingenuity. They 
have tried to twist the British Lion's tail, and 
evoke in Americans the memory of conflicts with 
England. ' They have exalted Germany to the 
heavens, for if any part of their claims were be- 
lieved Germany would not be condemned so much. 
Their loud, persistent declamation about Grerman 
greatness was really a way of saying to Americans : 
*' You should not look down upon us. We are the 
scions of a noble race. Our father's house is a 
good one, and you mustn't ask us to despise it." 

German- Americanism' might be described as a re- 
treat into an earlier piety. The strain of great 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 65 

events resulted in a sort of rush of blood from the 
head to the heart, from mature interests to childish 
memories. It wasn't a reasoned study of the causes 
of the war which produced the German propa- 
ganda. It was something far deeper and much less 
understood than that. The motives were not in 
the least simple. They were in part a defensive 
movement, an attempt to save the social standing 
of German things in America. They were in part 
a desire to enhance the German name here by as- 
sociating it with a mighty empire. I know one of 
the German-American " leaders " too well to have 
any serious doubts on this point. The discovery 
of the hyphen was the making of him. He was 
interviewed, talked about, cheered, hissed, and if 
he suffered at all, he endured a noble public pain, 
a tragedy enacted on a dazzling stage. Such sor- 
row many men enjoy hugely. 

The real hurt was not among the advertised 
figures against whom the editorials were written. 
It was among the voiceless men and women whose 
relatives were dying in Europe, whose standing in 
America was threatened. There were good Amer- 
icans who increased the hurt ; who stopped trading 
with German butchers, who discharged German 



66 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

servant girls, who turned around and scowled when 
they heard the German language spoken. They 
were cutting the bonds of loyalty — they were help- 
ing to hyphenate our population. By their lack of 
understanding, irritated no doubt by the vocifera- 
tions of men like Mr. Viereck, these Americans were 
putting an unbearable cross upon those of German 
speech and habit. They were attacking the Ger- 
mans in America for being what they could not 
help being, and with the cruelty of the incipient 
mob they were indicting a whole race. Inevitably- 
large masses of German-Americans drew into them- 
selves, became defensive, and tried to defend the 
name they bore. For the surest way to arouse na- 
tionalism is to attack it, and by nationalism I mean 
the loyalties of childhood, not the education of 
maturity. Turkish oppression exasperated Balkan 
nationalism to a fanatic pitch. Jew-baiting pro- 
duced the ghetto and is compelling Zionism; the 
bad economic habits of many Jews, their exploit- 
ing of simpler people, have often caused the victims 
to assert their own nationalism. 

The fierce power of national feeling is due to the 
fact that it rises from the deepest sources of our 
being. It is the primitive stuff of which we are 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 67 

made, our first loyalties, our first aggressions, the 
type and image of our souls. It is fixed in the 
nursery, and the spell of it is never lost. The 
things we knew as children, the standards we re- 
ceived, the tones we heard, the pictures we stored 
in our minds, the scenery, the houses, the gestures, 
the prayers, the rhymes, the games, shape us and 
color us. They are our nationality, that essence 
of our being which defines us against the back- 
ground of the world. 

Life would be a dry, thin business without it. 
A civilization made out of intellect and grown-up 
ambitions would have cut itself off from that rich 
fund of dumb meanings which we drag behind us 
from our childhood. A fine art is unthinkable 
among a people which knew no color and music in 
its infancy. Bring up children in the gray and 
muddy sanctions of a modern city, in the sterilized 
morality of desolate country towns, let them listen 
only to bad hymns and cheap jingles, let them wear 
clothes that are dull uniforms, and handle only 
lifeless machine-made furniture and trappings, and 
you starve art at its source. You produce what 
we have got in America, an art made out of fads 
at the top of the mind, conventionalized by prac- 



\ 

68 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

tice, and averting its gaze from any passion that 
stabs at reality. It is deeply true that a new coun- 
try cannot produce an art, for it has not had the 
time to become saturated with memory and weather- 
beaten with experience. 

This congeries of memories and emotions gives 
us standing and distinction in the world. If the 
nationality to which we belong is honored, we feel 
honored ; we swell up perceptibly at bearing a name 
that is great in the world. The American abroad 
is almost a specialist in this field. He feels lonely 
traveling through cities where men speak a lan- 
guage he doesn't understand and are preoccupied 
with affairs in which he takes no part. He feels 
lost and unimportant. And then perhaps he sees a 
sign — " American Bar " or " American Shoes " ; he 
finds a place where American Ice Cream Soda is 
sold, he sees the American Consul's shield over a 
doorway, he hears " Dixie " at a cabaret, and 
purrs. A friend of mine told me once that the 
deepest emotion he experienced while exploring in 
Thibet was the sight of an American sewing- 
machine. Under no other circumstances could he 
have been passionate about a sewing-machine. But 
in Thibet it was the nucleus of his love. 



PATRIOTISM IN THE ROUGH 69 

The American abroad will defend everything in 
America, will draw a picture of it that would make 
him roar with laughter at home. An individual 
feels instinctively that his own importance is asso- 
ciated with the importance of his group. " I've 
got a big brother at Harvard," says the small boy 
to his admiring companions. " I've got an uncle 
who has an automobile that can go sixty miles an 
hour," and the other small boys look upon him as 
one who can himself go sixty miles an hour. " Our 
export trade is three hundred million dollars a 
year," says the fifteen-dollar-a-week clerk, and he 
feels rich. The sisters, cousins, and aunts of a 
champion are looked upon as great athletes ; who 
does not feel that Jess Willard's wife must be a 
leader among women.'' When the German talks 
about his Luther, Kant, and Goethe, he is perhaps 
not without a sneaking suspicion that he belongs 
to the same breed. 

No wonder men speak of a " mystical entity 
whose life includes the lives of all the individuals, 
but whose life transcends the lives of those indi- 
viduals." When most intense, nationality turns a 
group of people into one super-person. The group 
lives, the individual is lost in its greater glory. 



70 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

This union with the sources of one's birth is the 
most powerful factor in all politics. Its mani- 
festations are innumerable. It may appear as a 
desire to see the American flag waving over Costa 
Rica, as a desperate defense of American cooking 
against the world, or as a readiness to sacrifice 
love, home, business, and life itself for the " honor " 
of the nation. But whatever the form it takes, 
patriotism is the offensive and the defensive reac- 
tion to our first experience of the world. It is the 
desire to have, to hold, to increase, to fortify 
whatever can be identified with our earliest hates 
and loves. 



CHAPTER VI 

PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, AND 
DIPLOMACY 

In Thorstein Veblen's new book ^ there is an inter- 
esting description of the American country town: 

" The nucleus of its population is the local busi- 
ness men, whose interests constitute the municipal 
policy and control its municipal administration. 
These local business men are such as the local bank- 
ers, merchants of many kinds and degrees, real estate 
promoters, local lawyers, local clergymen. . . . The 
business men who take up the local traffic in merchan- 
dizing, litigation, church enterprise and the like, com- 
monly begin with some share in the real estate specu- 
lation. This affords a common bond and a common 
ground of pecuniary interest, which commonly mas- 
querades under the name of local patriotism, public 
spirit, civic pride, and the like. This pretense of 
public spirit is so consistently maintained that most 
of these men come presently to believe in their own 
professions on that head. Pecuniary interest in local 
land values involves an interest in the continued 

* Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, Sup- 
plementary Note IV, p. 317. 

71 



72 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

growth of the town. Hence any creditable misrepre- 
sentation of the town's volume of business traffic, 
population, tributary farming community, or natural 
resources, is rated as serviceable to the common good. 
And any member of this business-like community 
will be rated as a meritorious citizen in proportion 
as he is serviceable to this joint pecuniary interest 
of these ' influential citizens.' " 

There is, it seems to me, one serious fault to be 
found with this satirical analysis. It is the use of 
the phrases " masquerades " and " pretense of 
public spirit." Had Professor Veblen analyzed the 
origin of patriotism, he would have found, I think, 
that it is not an ideal in a vacuum, but at bottom a 
primitive tendency to protect a home and satisfy 
ambitions. He would not have found, as he as- 
sumes, that patriotism is a disinterested passion 
which can be contrasted sharply with commercial 
motives. There are no separate compartments of 
the human spirit labeled respectively the " eco- 
nomic " and the " patriotic " interest. 

The attachment of a child to its toys, to candy, 
its preempting of trees and caves and alleys, its 
desire to be part of the best gang in town, are not 
regarded as " economic " because they do not in- 
volve the use of money. But the pursuits of later 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 73 

life are not a break with these childlike ambitions. 
They are a development of them — the doU's house 
turns into a suburban villa, the dolls are babies, the 
leader of the gang becomes president of the cham- 
ber of commerce. The transition from the wants 
of childhood to the wants of maturity is main- 
tained. There is, to be sure, great modification in 
them. But essentially we seek as men what we 
sought as children, and there is no point at which 
one can say: here the economic motive enters. 
From suckling at the breast and reaching for the 
moon to speculation in stocks and the purchase of 
a motor-car, there is an unbroken stream of appe- 
tite, which for some purposes we describe as eco- 
nomic. But in the most accurate sense, that is to 
say, in the most human sense, the motive is almost 
always mixed. We buy a house, not only to gather 
future increments of value, but because we like 
the neighbors and the scenery and are attached to 
the " old place." We desire promotion, not only 
because the pay is higher, but because the job is 
more interesting, the prestige is greater, because 
it will enable us to travel, it will make the wife 
happier, and permit us to play golf on Saturday 
afternoon. 



74 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

If you look at a human being as he lives in the 
world, instead of treating liim as an abstraction, 
there is simply no way of isolating what is called 
the economic or the patriotic motive. They are 
both aspects of the business of life, the business of 
getting on. That is why I should quarrel with the 
tone of Professor Veblen's analysis. He implies 
that patriotism is something other-worldly, some- 
thing sharply distinguished from the ordinary con- 
duct of life. Now the local pride of the real estate 
men may be a narrow patriotism, an uneducated 
patriotism, but it certainly isn't a masquerade. 
When a king speaks of the glory of his dominions, 
you may picture him, if you like, as a magnified 
real estate owner. When men resist armed inva- 
sion, they are protecting their real estate. You 
can say that in this war the Germans have cap- 
tured a great many parcels of French, Belgian, 
and Polish real estate. The fixing of frontiers is 
a real estate operation. Because real estate is in- 
volved, you can call the patriotism which sur- 
rounds it a masquerade. 

But the truer thing to say, it seems to me, is 
that patriotism envelops the real estate because the 
real estate nourishes the lives and careers of the 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 75 

patriots. Professor Veblen's small town magnates 
dote upon real estate rather than geometry, be- 
' cause real estate is their way to the protection 
and enhancement of themselves. If religion offers 
such opportunity there will be many churches ; if 
the army oif ers them there will be many soldiers ; 
if inheritance offers them, there will be many idle 
sons. The emotions of loyalty and value congre- 
gate about the " vital interests " of our lives. 
When they don't, we regard them, as insane. And 
yet the local patriots will fight for their real estate, 
and some of them will die that others may keep it. 
That is the riddle about patriotism in its relation 
to economics. 

The riddle, I fancy, may perhaps be read in 
some such way as this : out of our childhood rises 
a stream of appetite, colored by our earliest at- 
tachments. It seeks to satisfy itself, to magnify 
its importance, to protect what statesmen call its 
prestige and satirists call its vanity. This stream 
flows into the channels of business opportunity. 
By real estate or selling shoes our appetites search 
for their food. But in the process the forms of 
business are overlaid with our emotion. We wrap 
ourselves around our money-making, and trans- 



76 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

figure it. It is identified then with all that is most 
precious. The export of bicycles or steel rails is 
no longer the cold-blooded thing it looks like in 
statistical reports of commerce. It is integrated 
with our passion. It is wife and children and being 
respected. So when trade is attacked, we are 
attacked. The thing which was a means to an end 
has become part of ourselves. We are ready to 
fight and die for it because it taps the loyalties 
which are what we are. 

Passion is not an abstraction. It is what makes 
us move and act and feel. Passion must take some 
form, must have something to feed upon. And it 
seems to be able to feed upon almost anything from 
the thinnest dreams to the export of copper. But 
whatever it does feed upon is for the time being 
the passion itself. When copper exports are at- 
tacked, it isn't reasoned calculation alone which 
makes the decision for action. It is the feeling of 
the people whose passion is fused with the copper 
trade. 

How does it happen, though, that the people 
not concerned in a special interest are so ready to 
defend it against the world ? Plain men who have 
no financial interest in copper will feel aggrieved if 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 77^ 

American copper interests in a foreign land are 
attacked. The German people felt " humiliated " 
because German trade was thwarted in Morocco. 

The most obvious reason for this is that the pri- 
vate citizens are in the main abysmally ignorant of 
what the real stakes of diplomacy are. They 
do not think in terms of railroad concessions, 
mines, banking, and trade. When they envisage 
Morocco they do not think of the Mannesmann 
Brothers, but of " German prestige " and " French 
influence." When the Triple Entente compelled 
Germany to recede in the Moroccan affair of 1911, 
the rage of the German people was not due to a 
counting of their economic losses. They were furi- 
ous, not that they had lost Morocco, but that they 
had lost the dispute. There is small doubt that the 
masses of people in no country would risk war to 
secure mining concessions in Africa. But the 
choice is never presented to them that way. Each 
contest for economic privileges appears to the pub- 
lic as a kind of sporting event with loaded weapons. 
The people wish their team, that is, their country, 
to win. Just as strong men will weep because the 
second baseman fumbles at the crucial moment, so 
they will go into tantrums of rage because corpora- 



78 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

tions of their own nationality are thwarted in a 
commercial ambition. 

They may have nothing tangible to gain or lose 
by the transaction ; certainly they do not know 
whether they have. But they feel that " our " 
trade is their own, and though they share few of 
its profits they watch its career with tender solici- 
tude. Above all, they feel that if " our " German 
traders are beaten in Morocco, the whole value of 
being a German has been somewhat lessened. This 
is where business and national prestige flow to- 
gether. Business is the chief form which competi- 
tion between nations can assume. To be worsted in 
that competition means more than to lose money; 
it means a loss of social importance as well. 
Trademarks like " Made in Germany " were a 
constant humiliation to Englishmen, even though 
they were glad to buy the goods because they were 
cheaper and better. But when from all over the 
world Englishmen came home beaten by a greater 
vitality and more modem organization, their dam- 
aged pocketbooks were only the smallest part of 
their loss. The real wound was the wound of self- 
respect, the lurking fear that there has been a 
depreciation in Englishmen. The fear is empha- 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 79 

sized by the public opinion of the world which 
judges by trade efficiency and asks heartrending 
questions like: Is England decadent? Friendly 
critics rub salt into the wound by commenting on 
the obsolete machinery of British manufacture, the 
archaic habits of British merchants. Is it any 
wonder that what starts as a loss of dollars and 
cents is soon transfigured into a loss of the Eng- 
lishman's importance in the world? But when you 
attack that you attack the sources of his patriot- 
ism, and when he starts to reassert his importance, 
the proceeding has ceased to appear as a commer- 
cial enterprise. It has become a defense of British 
civilization. 

This is the mood for a strong foreign policy, 
which means a policy that uses political power to 
increase national prestige. The way to increase 
national prestige is to win economic victories by 
diplomatic methods. British diplomacy has been 
winning them for fifteen years — ^in Egypt, Persia, 
Africa. While Germany was capturing trade. 
Great Britain was scoring the diplomatic victories 
— the greatest of them being that in Morocco. 
From an economic point of view England had more 
to lose than to gain by a French dominion in 



80 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

Morocco. The real economic interest probably lay 
in that internationalization of Moroccan oppor- 
tunity for which Germany contended. But Eng- 
land's interest was not primarily economic. Her 
interest was the defeat of German aggrandizement. 
She fought German prestige, and by threatening 
war in Mr. Lloyd George's Mansion House speech 
she won. She sent German diplomats home to re- 
ceive the jeers of the German people. 

The actual trade of Morocco was insignificant 
In the melee. Morocco became the bone on which 
Germany and England tested the sharpness of 
their teeth. The two populations cared very little 
for any particular iron mine, but they cared enor- 
mously about the standing of Englishmen and 
Germans in settling world problems. The conse- 
quences of the Moroccan affair have been terrible 
beyond words. National feeling was unloosened 
which overflowed the original dispute. Morocco 
meant not money, but bad will, suspicion, fear, re- 
sentment. To the British it was evidence of Ger- 
man aggression ; to the German it represented the 
tightening of the iron ring, the policy of encircle- 
ment. The strongest passions of defense in both 
countries were called into the European arena, and 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 81 

when both sides claim to be defensive I see no rea- 
son for questioning their sincerity. It is perfectly 
possible for two nations both to feel attacked at 
the same time. 

In some such way as this patriotism becomes in- 
volved in business. Specific disputes over specific 
trade opportunities become the testing points of 
national pride. Just as a man will fight a law- 
suit at tremendous cost for a trivial sum, so na- 
tions will risk war to score a diplomatic victory. 
They feel that a defeat on one point will exhibit 
weakness and carry in its train defeat on other 
points. So they throw into the scales of decision 
their armaments. Navies and armies are prepared 
for peace as well as war. They are prepared to 
underline and emphasize diplomatic negotiation. 
They are a kind of initiation fee to the diplomatic 
corps. The weak threat of a strong Power counts 
for more than the strong threat of a weak one. 
When two diplomats meet, the decisive thing is 
not their good manners nor the justice of their 
pleas, it is the potential power of the nation for 
which they speak. Costa Rica may have envoys 
at European capitals, but they are not listened to 
eagerly. Imagine Costa Rica with a great navy, 



82 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

and her minister's view would be consulted with 
real interest. 

There are in the world to-day not more than 
eight Powers which really count — Great Britain, 
France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
Japan, and the United States. When I say 
" count," I mean that the effective force of the 
world is in their hands, and that the decision of 
world affairs is for them. The other nations lie in 
the orbit of the Great Powers. They follow but 
do not lead. Central America can have no foreign 
policy without consulting the United States. The 
immediate cause of the war was over the question 
of whether Serbia should become a satellite of the 
Germanic-Magyar combination or of the Russian 
Empire. Turkey in the last few years has fol- 
lowed a German lead. England's prime interest in 
Belgium was that it should not fall within the 
German sphere. 

> There is an incessant competition between gov- 
ernments to attach these smaller states to them- 
selves. At no point can one say that specific trade 
opportunities are the prize. The real prize for the 
diplomats is an increase of power, a greater em- 
phasis to their word. Their nations rally behind 



PATRIOTISM, BUSINESS, DIPLOMACY 83 

them — the interested business men see it as dollar 
diplomacy, the mass of the people, hardly aware 
of the concrete issues, see it as a gigantic com- 
petition involving their own sense of importance. 
The diplomatic struggle is played in Morocco, at 
Constantinople, in Pekin, wherever there are stakes 
for which to play. At home there is joy in vic- 
tory, anger at defeat. Armament is added as an 
" insurance " for diplomacy, and of course mili- 
tary preparation always calls forth military prepa- 
ration. Every international incident is seen then, 
not on its " merits," but in its relation to the whole 
vast complicated game, forever teetering on the 
edge of war. 



PART II 



CHAPTER VII 

ARENAS OF FRICTION 

This whole business of jockeying for position is 
at first glance so incredibly siUy that many liberals 
regard diplomacy as a cross between sinister con- 
spiracy and a meaningless etiquette. It would be 
all of that if the stakes of diplomacy were not 
real. Those stakes have to be understood, for 
without such an understanding diplomacy is in- 
comprehensible and any scheme of world peace an 
idle fancy. 

The chief, the overwhelming problem of diplo- 
macy seems to be the weak state — the Balkans, the 
African sultanates, Turkey, China, and Latin 
America, with the possible exception of the Argen- 
tine, Chile, and Brazil. These states are " weak " 
because they are industrially backward and at pres- 
ent politically incompetent. They are rich in re- 
sources and cheap labor, poor in capital, poor in 
political experience, poor in the power of defense. 
The government of these states is the supreme 

87 



88 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

problem of diplomacy. Just as the chief task of 
American politics to the Civil War was the organi- 
zation of the unexploited West, so the chief task 
of world diplomacy to-day is the organization of 
virgin territory and backward peoples. I use 
backward in the conventional sense to mean a 
people unaccustomed to modem commerce and 
modern political administration. 

This solicitude about backward peoples seems to 
many good democrats a combination of super- 
ciliousness and greed. I have heard wise old Hin- 
dus grow tense with rage at the thought of some 
cockney Kiplingesque bureaucrat bringing " civili- 
zation " to the saturated civilization of the Bast. 
I have walked through Boston slums with an 
Indian, and it was I who did the apologizing. We 
laughed together over the white man's burden. 
" I'd rather be in hell than in the British Em- 
pire," said the Hindu. " How about being in the 
Russian or German Empires ? " I inquired. " I've 
thought of it," he replied ; " that's why I am a 
loyal subject of the British Crown." 

He went on to explain that he had given up the 
dream of his youth, which was to see India an inde- 
pendent nation. " It can't be done," he said ; 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 89 

" we'd fight, and our princes would intrigue, and 
before long some Europeans would be killed. If 
the British didn't come back, the Russians would 
come, or even the Japanese, and we couldn't defend 
ourselves. We know how to fight in the old- 
fashioned way, but modern war, which is so much a 
question of factories and machinery and discipline, 
that's not the kind of thing we can carry on — 
now. We can't build submarines and dreadnoughts 
and all the other things you people call civiliza- 
tion. So we'll have to live under your ' protection ' 
— that's the way they describe it — ^while our people 
learn to sweat in factories and putter around on 
the stock exchange. Yes, we'll read newspapers, 
and learn the names and dates of the English 
kings, and when the upstarts who govern us are 
harsh we'll know how to make it hot for them. 
The white man won't swallow us, and we'll go on 
and learn to have pride and to organize, and who 
knows but our great-grandchildren may be able to 
ride in Pullman cars with the lords of the earth." 
To the dogmatic anti-imperialist it seems ab- 
surd that white people do not stay at home and 
civilize themselves, leaving the Indians and Moors 
and Hottentots and Yaquis to wort out their 



90 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

own salvation. The whole business of expansion 
by the western peoples is hateful to these liberals. 
They remember the caste system, the arrogance, 
the unspeakable horrors of the Congo and Puto- 
mayo, the ravishing and despoiling and debauching 
of natives by the European. It is a hideous story. 
And yet the plain fact is that the interrelation of 
peoples has gone so far that to advocate interna- 
tional laissez-faire now is to speak a counsel of 
despair. Commercial cunning, lust of conquest, 
rum, bibles, rifles, missionaries, traders, conces- 
sionaires have brought the two civilizations into 
contact, and the problem created must be solved, 
not evaded. 

The great African empires, for example, were 
not created deliberately by theoretical imperialists. 
Explorers, missionaries, and traders penetrated 
these countries. They found rubber, oil, cocoa, 
tin; they could sell cotton goods, rifles, liquor. 
The native rulers bartered away enormous riches 
at trivial prices. But the trading-posts and the 
concessions were insecure. There were raids and 
massacres. No public works existed, no adminis- 
trative machinery. The Europeans exploited the 
natives cruelly, and the natives retaliated. Con- 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 91 

cession hunters and merchants from other nations 
began to come in. They bribed and bullied the 
chiefs, and created still greater insecurity. An 
appeal would be made to the home government for 
help, which generally meant declaring a protecto- 
rate of the country. Armed forces were sent in to 
pacify, and civil servants to administer the coun- 
try. These protectorates were generally sanc- 
tioned by the other European governments on the 
proviso that trade should be free to all. 

The record of government by Europeans is 
varied. The Belgian Congo, for example, was un- 
til recently, at least, desperately mismanaged ; 
British Nigeria seems to have been the maturest ex- 
perience of British imperialism. The contrasts are 
extraordinary. In the Congo, before the Belgian 
government took it over, the administration was 
corrupt and cruel. " It is very evident," wrote 
Consul Nightingale to Sir Edward Grey in 1906, 
" that an idea prevails that the native is as much a 
part and parcel of the concessionary companies' 
property, as if he were a bundle of rubber or 
gum." ^ In Nigeria the British seem to have gone 

' Nov. SO, 1906, Brit, Pari. Papers, 1906, Congo, Ed. 
3450, No. 28, p. 47, quoted in Intervention and ColonxzO' 



92 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

as far as it was humanly possible, not only to 
protect the native, but to preserve his civilization 
under the new conditions. For example, revenue 
was needed for governmental purposes. But " the 
people were unaccustomed to regular taxes; and 
many of the chiefs had been deprived of their main 
source of income by the abolition of slave trading. 
. . . The new scheme of taxation was simple and 
based upon the old method employed by the Emirs 
of the Mohammedan states, who had farmed out 
the taxes to certain favored headmen and levied 
them on the basis described in the Koran." ^ The 
system was modified later, but the interesting point 
about the experiment is the humane wisdom by which 
an effort was made to adjust modern necessities to 
ancient habits. The same policy was pursued in 
the courts. The first attempt was to substitute 
English common law for the native legal system; 
" but in 1904 the local criminal law was very wisely 
substituted for the British. In 1906 detailed 
proclamations were published reestablishing the 
Alkalis Court, authorizing the Judicial Council, 

tion in Africa, by Norman Dwight Harris, p. 44, Houghton 
Mifflin Co. 

1 Idem, pp. 152-3. 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 93 

and empowering the provincial courts to punish 
for disobedience to the native authorities or courts 
within their spheres." No attempt here to make 
imitation Englishmen out of the Nigerians. When 
schools were erected, the instruction was in the 
Hausa language, and in the Church Missionary 
School no child is allowed to learn English until he 
can read his native language. Granting all human 
limitations, what the British have attempted is to 
introduce Nigeria into the administrative structure 
of the modern world without thwarting its native 
growth or destroying its local integrity. 

It is essential to remember that what turns a 
territory into a diplomatic " problem " is the com- 
bination of natural resources, cheap labor, markets, 
defenselessness, corrupt and inefficient government. 
The desert of Sahara is no " problem," except 
where there are oases and trade routes. Switzer- 
land is no "problem," for Switzerland is a highly 
organized modern state. But Mexico is a problem, 
and Haiti, and Turkey, and Persia. They have the 
pretension of political independence which they do 
not fulfill. They are seething with corruption, 
eaten up with " foreign " concessions, and unable 
to control the adventurers they attract or safe- 



94 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

guard the rights which these adventurers claim. 
More foreign capital is invested in the United 
States than in Mexico, but the United States is 
not a " problem " and Mexico is. The difference 
was hinted at in President Wilson's speech at 
Mobile. Foreigners invest in the United States, and 
they are assured that life will be reasonably safe 
and that titles to property are secured by orderly 
legal means. But in Mexico they are given " con- 
cessions," which means that they secure extra privi- 
leges and run greater risks, and they count upon 
the support of European governments or of the 
United States to protect them and their property. 
The weak states, in other words, are those which 
lack the political development that modem com- 
merce requires. To take an extreme case which 
brings out the real nature of the " problem," sup- 
pose that the United States was organized politi- 
cally as England was in the time of William the Con- 
queror. Would it not be impossible to do business 
in the United States ? There would be an everlast- 
ing clash between an impossible legal system and a 
growing commercial development. And the in- 
ternal affairs of the United States would consti- 
tute a diplomatic " problem." 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 95 

This, it seems to me, is the reason behind the 
outburst of modern imperialism among the Great 
Powers. It is not enough to say that they are 
" expanding " or " seeking markets " or " grab- 
bing resources." They are doing all these things, 
of course. But if the world into which they are 
expanding were not politically archaic, the growth 
of foreign trade would not be accompanied by po- 
litical imperialism. Germany has " expanded " 
wonderfully in the British Empire, in Russia, in 
the United States, but no German is silly enough to 
insist on planting his flag wherever he sells his 
dyestufFs or stoves. It is only when his expansion 
is into weak states — into China, Morocco, Turkey, 
or elsewhere that foreign trade is imperialistic. 
This imperialism is actuated by many motives — 
by a feeling that political control insures special 
privileges, by a desire to play a large part in the 
world, by national vanity, by a passion for " owner- 
ship," but none of these motives would come into 
play if countries like China or Turkey were not 
politically backward. 

Imperialism in our day begins generally as an 
attempt to police and pacify. This attempt stimu- 
lates national pride, it creates bureaucrats with a 



96 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

vested interest in imperialism, it sucks in and re- 
ceives added strength from concessionaires and 
traders who are looking for economic privileges. 
There is no doubt that certain classes in a nation 
gain by imperialism, though to the people as a 
whole the adventure may mean nothing more than 
an increased burden of taxes. 

Some pacifists have attempted to deny that a 
nation could ever gain anything by political con- 
trol of weak states. They have not defined the 
" nation." VVhat they overlook is that even the 
most ad*'anced nations are governed, not by the 
" people," but by groups with special interests. 
These groups do gain, just as the railroad men 
who controlled American legislatures gained. A 
knot of traders closely in league with the colonial 
office of a great Power can make a good deal of 
money out of its friendships. Every government 
has contracts to be let, franchises to give; it 
establishes tariffs, fixes railroad rates, apportions 
taxes, creates public works, builds roads. To be 
favored by that power is to be favored indeed. 
The favoritism may cost the motherland and the 
colony dear, but the colonial merchant is not a 
philanthropist. 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 97 

The whole question of imperialism is as complex 
as the motives of the African trader who sub- 
sidizes the African missionary. He does not know 
where business ends and religion begins ; he is able 
to make no sharp distinction between his humani- 
tarianism and his profits. He feels that business is 
a good thing, and religion is a good thing. He 
likes to help himself, and to see others helped. The 
same complexity of motives appears in imperialist 
statesmen. 

" France must make herself loved as well as re- 
spected," said M. Raymond Poincare in explaining 
the protectorate treaty of 1912 over Morocco. 
" In the examination and defense of her interests 
and her rights, France has not separated her own 
cause from that of Europe. She has remembered 
that it was her duty to aid the march of civiliza- 
tion," said M. Pichon in discussing Moroccan af- 
fairs. We are inclined to smile at these fine words 
when we remember the exploitation which generally 
accompanies these protectorates. And yet the 
speech of M. Pichon is candid. When he speaks 
of " interests " and the " march of civilization " 
he pictures the twin motives which actuate imperial- 
ism. It is neither disinterested service nor sheer 



98 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

grabbing. It is an effort to make civilization 
march so that interests are protected. For modem 
nations have learned that interests thrive best 
where civilization in the Western commercial sense 
has been introduced. They cannot milk the cow 
without feeding her, and after a while, if the milk 
is good, they develop a considerable affection for 
the cow. 

The whole situation might be summed up by say- I 
ing that the commercial development of the world 
will not wait until each territory has created for 
itself a stable and fairly modem political system. 
By some means or other the weak states have to be 
brought within the framework of commercial ad- 
ministration. Their independence and integrity, 
so-called, are dependent upon their creating con- 
ditions under which world-wide business can be 
conducted. The pressure to organize the globe is 
enormous. 

How enormous it is can be seen by studying the 
action of those great Powers which have had no 
colonial ambition. In the early eighties Germany 
under Bismarck set its face against expansion in 
Africa.* But back in 1842 a German missionary 
^Idem, p. 64. 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 99 

society had acquired twelve mission stations and 
considerable property in what is now German 
Southwest Africa. In 1863 there was a civil war 
between the Herreros and Hottentots, and sev- 
eral missions were destroyed. In 1868 the Prus- 
sian government petitioned the British to establish 
a protectorate over Walfish Bay and the Herrero- 
land. The British Foreign Office declined to do 
this, but it sent out a Commissioner who estab- 
lished peace between the tribes. Trouble continued. 
Finally, nine years later, in 1877, the protectorate 
was created. The British did not care for the job. 
It was expensive and dangerous. In 1880 another 
war broke out, and this time the British refused 
to intervene with military force. The Germans 
again asked protection, and the British refused 
any special aid. In 1883 Count Herbert Bismarck 
asked Great Britain whether she would protect a 
Bremen merchant named Liideritz who wished to 
set up a factory on the coast. The English said 
they would do their best. Herr Liideritz sent out 
his expedition, and purchased 150 square miles 
near Angra Pequena Bay from the Hottentot 
chief. The price was two hundred rifles and one 
hundred dollars in cash. Then Herr Liideritz pro- 



100 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ceeded to enlarge his domain. He bought an im- 
mense tract for three thousand dollars and sixty 
guns. But it happened unluckily that he had 
bought places already preempted by British trad- 
ers. The British appealed to their government, 
Herr Liideritz to his. The British sent a warship 
to Angra Pequena Bay to keep the German and 
British traders from exploding. 

There were communications between the govern- 
ments, and protestations from Germany that she 
had no intention of acquiring political rights. The 
British hesitated, and could not decide. Finally, in 
1884, Bismarck announced that Herr Liideritz and 
his business were under the protection of the Ger- 
man Empire. There was some intrigue, and the 
Germans sent a warship to take possession of the 
territory. The negotiations were carried out, and 
Germany was an African Power with 215,000 
square miles of territory. 

Another illuminating example of how European 
Powers become " interested " in weaker states is to 
be found in Italy's relations to Tripoli. Mr. Mor- 
ton Fullerton introduces the story as follows : ^ 
*' Signor Guglielmo Ferrero has pointed out that 
* Cf. Fullerton, Problems of Power, p. 249. 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 101 

' if Turkey has lost Tripoli, it is because the belli- 
cose enthusiasm of a new nationalistic Italy has 
forced the hand of the Government.' The rapid 
rise and the effective activity of the young Italian 
nationalists is one of the most interesting socio- 
political phenomena of our time. But, behind this 
remarkable movement, a curious series of invisible 
financial causes prepared Italian public opinion for 
the conquest of the ancient Roman province of 
Lybia." Mr. FuUerton then quotes an extract 
from an article by M. Pinon,^ which I take the 
liberty of reproducing : 

"At the beginning of the reign of Leo XIII, the 
Banco di Roma was a financial house of relatively 
slight importance, established by private individuals. 
Its manager, Ernesto Pacelli, succeeded in winning 
the confidence of the Pope's entourage, and Leo XIII 
intrusted to him the funds of the Holy See. The 
addition of this new capital made it possible for the 
Banco di Roma to develop its business. But its rela- 
tions with the Vatican prevented it from penetrating 
into the business world connected with the Quirinal, 
and notably to get its bills discounted by the Bank 
of Italy. Eager to force that door, the Banco di 
Roma sought advice in Government circles. The 

* " L'Europe et La Guerre Italo-Turque," by Ren6 Pinon 
— the Revue des deux Mondes, June 1, 1912. 



102 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

President of its Board of Directors was the Presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Commerce^ brother of the 
then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Signor Tittoni. It 
was the period when the Italian Government was 
signing with M. Delcasse the agreements declaring 
that France repudiated her interests in the Tripoli- 
taine, and that Italy repudiated hers in Morocco. 
The Italian Government wished to secure in the 
Tripolitaine economic interests, which would permit 
it to develop Italian industry and commerce there, 
which would virtually amount to securing a mortgage 
on the province, and might, were the case ever to 
arise, provide an opportunity for armed intervention. 
The Banco di Roma secured the coveted business 
connection with the Bank of Italy, promising in re- 
turn to participate in Italian enterprises in the 
Tripolitaine and in Cyrenaica, A whole series of 
undertakings and ventures were then founded in 
Tripoli and along the coast, with the capital, and 
under the direction of an agent of the Banco di Roma, 
Signor Bresciani, an ex-official of Erythrea; oil in- 
dustries, soap manufactures, grain elevators, fishr 
eries, the sponge trade, the purchase of land, electric 
works at Benghazi, a shipping line subventioned by 
the Government, and possessing at present four 
steamers. Missions were sent inland to enter into 
relations with the influential chiefs and marabouts. 
The Banco di Roma increased its capital to 80,000,- 
000 francs, and recently augmented it still further. 
Notwithstanding these efforts trade remained stag- 
nant; business did not develop; the capital expended 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 103 

remained unproductive; the financial obligations be- 
came more and more serious. The Ottoman officials 
put all kinds of obstacles in the way of the economic 
development of the province, seeking particularly to 
thwart the Italian ventures ; at Benghazi, for instance, 
the electric power works for the lighting of the 
town were not authorized. The Banco di Roma, 
having engaged a considerable capital in Africa, in 
'the interest and almost at the suggestion of the Gov- 
ernment, with the assurance that one day the Tripoli- 
taine and Cyrenaica would pass under Italian domina- 
tion, and that the expectations of the shareholders 
would eventually be recompensed, found itself, it is 
said, in difficulties. Last year, its manager informed 
the Government that he was on the point of being 
driven to a liquidation of his interests in the Tripoli- 
taine, and that he was preparing to enter upon pour- 
parlers with an English group and a German group. 
It would appear that the prospect greatly contributed 
to the determination of the Government to intervene, 
if necessary, by arms. Once hostilities began, the 
Banco di Roma obtained the contract for the com- 
missariat operations and the clothing of the troops 
of the expeditionary corps. It remains associated 
with the Government for the development of Italian 
interests in the Tripolitaine. Thus, the Bank which 
has the confidence of the Vatican happens, at the 
same time, to be the first and foremost promoter of 
Italian enterprises in the Tripolitaine: an elegant 
comhinazione, uniting, for a work of Italian expan- 
sion and Christian propaganda, the two historic forces 



104 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

of Rome which officially ignore each other and sev- 
erally combat one another." 



What are the factors of this situation? They 
are what might be called a scab bank, a government 
desiring increased political power, a class of traders 
associated with the government and desiring new 
markets and resources, an agreement with Euro- 
pean Powers virtually turning Tripoli over to 
Italy, a hostile and no doubt inefficient and cor- 
rupt Turkish administration, the sinking of much 
money which had to be retrieved, an expanding 
Italian pride spinning dreams of ancient Rome, 
a natural Christian contempt for infidels. Given 
that situation, the Italian enterprise finds itself 
balked. " The Turks are hampering Italians." 
Nothing easier than to regard it as a point of 
honor. News that Englishmen and Germans may 
have to replace the bankrupt Italians. Nothing 
easier than to regard that as a point of honor. A 
general feeling that to beat the Turks is for the 
glory of God anyway. Church money risked in a 
country of unbelievers. Influential and worried 
shareholders, who perhaps control sympathetic 
newspapers. Socialist agitation at home which re- 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 105 

quires the sedative of patriotism. Large numbers 
of unemployed orators, poets, and officers who feel 
that a little military glory would help. Perhaps 
some French and English diplomatic nudging in 
order to push Italy, which is Germany's ally, into 
a war with Turkey, which is also Germany's ally. 
The prospect of war contracts, of administrative 
jobs in the conquered province. The people who 
have something to gain play upon the national 
pride of those who think they have nothing to lose. 
The electric power plant at Benghazi becomes a 
point in a Holy War, a crusade, a defense of 
Italian sovereignty, a safeguarding of Christian 
sufferers, an interest of civilization, of Latin 
genius, of Papal power, of the Roman eagles, of 
Cassar, Augustus, Vergil, Dante, of Jesus Christ 
against Mohammed. Nobody talks about the 
Banco di Roma. 

The formula of modern imperialism seems to be 
that financial groups enter a weak state and create 
" national interests," which then evoke national 
feeling. The corruption and inefficiency of the 
weak state " endanger " the interests ; patriotism 
rises to defend them, and political control follows. 
JThe prestige of a Power in the councils of the 



106 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

world depends upon the weight of " interests " 
and the patriotic fervor with which they are " pro- 
tected." I am told that it was the State Depart- 
ment at Washington which, in order to secure a 
diplomatic " foothold," invited the American 
financial group to enter China. A government 
which hesitates very long at intervention, as the 
United States has done in Mexico, depreciates the 
value of its diplomatic power everywhere. 

Out of this complexity of motive there is 
created a union of various groups on the imperial 
programme : the diplomatic group is interested pri- 
marily in prestige; the military group in an op- 
portunity to act ; the bureaucratic in the creation 
of new positions ; the financial groups in safe- 
guarding investments ; traders in securing protec- 
tion and privileges, religious groups in civilizing 
the heathen, the " intellectuals," in realizing 
theories of expansion and carrying out " manifest 
destinies," the people generally in adventure and 
glory and the sense of being great. These inter- 
ested groups severally control public opinion, and 
under modem methods of publicity public opinion 
is easily " educated." 

Who should intervene in backward states, what 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 107 

the intervention shall mean, how the protectorate 
shall be conducted — this is the bone and sinew of 
raodern diplomacy. The weak spots of the world 
are the arenas of friction. This friction is in- 
creased and made popular by frontier disputes 
over Alsace-Lorraine or Italia Irredenta, but in my 
judgment the boundary lines of Europe are not 
the grand causes of diplomatic struggle. Signor 
Ferrero confessed recently that the present genera- 
tion of Italians had all but forgotten Italia Irre- 
denta, and the Revanche has been a decadent 
French dream until the Entente and the Dual Alli- 
ance began to clash in Morocco, in Turkey, in 
China. Alsace-Lorraine has no doubt kept alive 
suspicion of Germany, and predisposed French 
opinion to inflicting diplomatic defeats in Morocco. 
But the arena where the European Powers really 
measure their strength against each other is in the 
Balkans, in Africa, and in Asia. 

Our Monroe Doctrine is part of this world- 
wide diplomatic contest. It is the announcement 
that this hemisphere is not to be made part of the 
substance of European diplomacy. In return we 
virtually agree to protect by force the interests of 
modern commerce in the weaker Latin-American 



lOS THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

states. We forbid European intervention, but we 
guarantee to remove the cause by which European 
intervention would be justified by Continental 
Powers. We have tried to establish an American 
oasis, free from the shiftings of European power. 
So far circumstances have enabled us to fulfill our 
pretensions. But over the rest of the world this 
struggle has brooded for decades, and the accumu- 
lated irritations of it have produced the great war. 
Diplomacy has appealed to arms because no satis- 
factory international solution has been found for 
the Balkan, Turkish, African, and Chinese prob- 
lems. 

This war is fought not for specific possessions, 
but for that diplomatic prestige and leadership 
which are required to solve all the different prob- 
lems. It is like a great election to decide who 
shall have the supreme power in the Concert of 
Europe. Austria began the contest to secure her 
position as a great Power in the Balkans ; Russia 
entered it to thwart this ambition ; France was 
engaged because German diplomatic supremacy 
would reduce France to a " second-class power," 
which means a power that holds world power on 
sufi'erance ; England could not afford to see France 



ARENAS OF FRICTION 10^ 

" crushed " or Belgium annexed because British 
imperialism cannot alone cope with the vigor of 
Germanj ; Germany felt herself " encircled," which 
meant that wherever she went — to Morocco, Asia 
Minor, or China — there a coalition was ready to 
thwart her. The ultimate question involved was 
this : whenever in the future diplomats meet to 
settle a problem in the backward countries, which 
European nation shall be listened to most ear- 
nestly? What shall be the relative prestige of 
Germans and Englishmen and Frenchmen and Rus- 
sians ; what sense of their power, what historical 
halo, what threat of force, what stimulus to admi- 
ration shall they possess? To lose this war will 
be like being a Republican politician in the solid 
South when the Democrats are in power at Wash- 
ington. It will mean political, social, and economic 
inferiority. 

Americans have every reason to understand the 
dangers of unorganized territory, to realize clearly 
why it is a " problem." Our Civil War was pre- 
ceded by thirty or forty years of diplomatic strug- 
gle for a balance of power in the West. Should 
the West be slave or free, that is, should it be the 
scene of homesteads and free labor, or of planta- 



110 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

tions and slaves? Should it be formed into states 
which sent senators and representatives to support 
the South or the North? We were virtually two 
nations, each trying to upset the balance of power 
in its own favor. And when the South saw that 
it was beaten, that is to say " encircled," when its 
place in the Western sun was denied, the South 
seceded and fought. Until the problem of organ- 
izing the West had been settled, peace and federal 
union were impossible. 

The world's problem is the same problem tre- 
mendously magnified and complicated. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 

One of the most puzzling aspects of international 
politics is the stubborn way in which the ordinary 
citizen refuses to bother his head about the ques- 
tions which really trouble the diplomats. He will 
not think about foreign affairs in terms of mar- 
kets, concessions, and the exploitation of weak 
peoples. The stakes of diplomacy figure hardly at 
all in popular thinking. The big items are frontier 
disputes, the oppression of kindred people, racial 
mysticism, and a huge sentimental interest in pres- 
tige. Now these preoccupations no doubt count 
enormously in creating the explosive energies of 
international affairs. They explain the existence 
of hostile feeling among the masses of the people. 
They do not explain the direction which that hos- 
tility takes. 

It has often been pointed out that within the 
memory of living men the nations of Europe now 

fighting have been friends with their enemies and 
111 



112 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

enemies with their friends. On no theory of racial 
antagonism, nationality, or cultural difference and 
affinity can you explain the fact that up to twenty 
years ago England was friends with Germany, and 
deeply hostile to France and Russia ; it isn't " Mus- 
covite barbarism " versus " Teutonic Kultur " 
which explains the dropping of Bismarck's alli- 
ance with Russia; it isn't any sentimental theory 
which explains why Germany supplanted England 
as the friend of Turkey; why Russia and Japan 
fought ten years ago and have become allies now. 
The attempt to explain the world war in terms of 
Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, Italia Irredenta, and so 
forth, breaks down utterly in the face of the real 
issues which have dominated the Armed Peace since 
1870. The world-wide struggle between Great 
Britain and Germany has not been over the na- 
tional boundaries of Europe. To say that Great 
Britain is fighting for the small nations of the 
Continent when her ally Russia is the oppressor 
of Finns, Poles, and Jews, and her ally Japan is 
the aggressor on Chinamen and Koreans, when 
Great Britain herself is one of the partitioners of 
Persia, is nothing but the talk of English liberal* 
who make a pious wish father to a pious thought. 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 113 

The mere mention of recent diplomatic events 
ought to dispel the illusion that the line-up in 
Europe is cultural or national. Fashoda: in 1898 
France and England were on the verge of war over 
it. Where is Fashoda? In the heart of Africa. 
The Entente Cordiale: on what basis was it made? 
Primarily on the basis of an agreement about 
Newfoundland fisheries, West African boundaries, 
Siam, Madagascar, the New Hebrides, and above 
all Egypt and Morocco; it was the settling of 
those differences in order to present a united front 
to Germany. Algeciras, Casablanca, Agadir: all 
of them in Africa. The Bagdad Railway : in Asia 
Minor. The Balkan crisis. The division of Persia. 
The Russo-Japanese War : Manchuria. The Italo- 
Turkish War: Tripoli. The Bosnian crisis. The 
Spanish- American War: Cuba, Porto Rico, the 
Philippines. The Venezuelan affair with England. 

It has been the weakness of almost all pacifists 
that they have never grappled with these problems 
from which the shifting antagonisms of nations 
receive their direction. They will not face the 
fact that the diplomatic struggle, the armed peace, 
and the war itself revolves about the exploitation 
of weak territories; that the Balance of Power, 



114 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

the secret alliances, the desire for prestige, and the 
rest of the diplomatic paraphernalia are for use 
in the archaic and unorganized portions of the 
globe; that the anarchy of Europe is due to the 
anarchy of the Balkans, Africa, and Asia. The 
diplomats have at least seen the reality, as a read- 
ing of their negotiations will show. They have 
failed to solve the problem, but most pacifists have 
not even seen the problem. 

The diplomats have even had a programme for 
the peaceful organization of backward countries. 
Their formula has been " the preservation of their 
integrity and the open door to the commerce of all 
nations." Almost every recent diplomatic document 
dealing with Asia or Africa contains some such 
announcement. The doctrine is intended to allay 
suspicion, but it does more than that. In a half- 
hearted way it grasps at a solution of the world 
problem. For if you can preserve the integrity of 
a country, and you can keep the door open, then 
you preclude any one nation from monopoly, you 
give all nations an interest in preventing aggres- 
sion, and you remove the prime source of friction, 
which is the attempt of traders to secure control 
of the territory and discriminate against their 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 115 

competitors. The diplomats diagnosed the malady. 
They saw that the weakness of these countries in- 
vited aggressive competition, so they proclaimed 
territorial integrity. They saw that the chief in- 
terest of all nations was trade, so they proclaimed 
the Open Door. They saw that only one nation 
could gain by imperial control and special economic 
privilege, and they hoped that the interests of all 
the others would prevent the absorption of weaker 
states. The ideal they stood for was international. 
Taken at its face value, it meant that modern com- 
merce was to penetrate without destroying the 
life of the natives and without preempting the ter- 
ritory for the business men of any one nationality. 
The only trouble with the ideal was that it 
could not be taken at its face value. Integrity and 
the Open Door have almost never been realized, and 
the phrases of treaties have frequently remained 
an empty aspiration. Americans ought to have 
no difficulty in understanding this result. We too 
have an ideal of the open door to all comers, and 
we know how hard it has been to make our govern- 
ment live up to that ideal. We know how rail- 
roads have discriminated in their rates, how officials 
have given special privileges to special interests^ 



116 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

We have fought a long fight against it. Well, the 
same kind of forces which have so often shut the 
open door in the United States are at work in 
these weak countries where governments extend 
their imperial control. Groups of business men 
tend to secure political power in the vassal terri- 
tory, and after that integrity and the Open Door 
are likely to be a good deal of a mockery. 

A rough formula of what happens may be drawn 
up. A government for one reason or another ac- 
quires dominion over a backward people. Nowa- 
days it almost always does so with the consent of 
the other Powers. The act is proclaimed to be a 
European stewardship, a disinterested piece of 
international policing, all nations are promised 
equal rights, the " protected " people are promised 
a benevolent guardian. This work is done, not by 
angels, but by colonial officials. These human, 
all-too-human, beings become associated with con- 
tractors, concessionaires, bankers, traders. The 
officials have big favors to give — franchises, min- 
ing rights, docking privileges, land laws, taxation, 
customs administration, public works. The colo- 
nial officials must give them to somebody and they 
have to translate the phrase " open door " into 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 117 

these concrete matters. If they are French officials 
knowing French business men, what is more natural 
than that these decisions should go against the 
German competitors? With the best intentions in 
the world it would be hard to maintain equal rights. 
And their intentions are not always the best in 
the world. 

They are living in a distant country. They 
are homesick, they are afraid of the natives, they 
form clubs, and the wives of officials know the 
wives of the business men. There is an interlock- 
ing of interest, friendship, prejudice, and corrup- 
tion. The Open Door disappears in the shuffle. 
There is no strong public opinion to maintain it. 
The disinterested people at home, if there are any, 
cannot watch the details of every colonial adminis- 
trative order. They have no adequate way of 
knowing whether their officials are betraying or 
fulfilling the pledge given to the world. 

Even if the people at home did have a way of 
knowing, they would not be over-anxious to hold 
the trust sacred. The people at home believe that 
*' our colonies " are for " our trade " ; they want 
to see " our business men " increase " our wealth." 
The popular philosophy of the world is that trade 



118 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

is a national enterprise to be advanced by national 
political actions. A real internationalism of com- 
merce is still Utopian and silly to public opinion 
in every country. People believe that trade fol- 
lows the flag, that to enlarge political control is 
to increase prosperity. This philosophy prevents 
the home government from checking the favoritism 
of colonial officials even when that favoritism is 
turning treaties into scraps of paper. 

Many writers, notably Mr. Norman Angell, have 
argued that this philosophy is a great illusion. A 
people cannot prosper, they say, by extending 
political control. They claim that free trade is 
the best road to prosperity, that a nation cannot 
gain wealth for itself by tariffs and discriminations 
and privileges in its colonies. They may be right, 
although the evidence is to my mind far from com- 
plete. But whatever may be the truth about the 
loss or gain to a whole people, there can be little 
doubt that there is a real possibility of gain to a 
group of capitalists. 

The French peasant may be poorer because his 
government administers an African empire, but 
that certain French bankers or business men are 
richer there can be no question. If those capi- 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 119 

talists can secure a monopoly, the whole world may 
suffer but the capitalists gain. Free trade may 
make for the prosperity of the masses, but tariffs, 
rebates, and monopolies create millionaires. And 
it is not the masses which control governments ; 
it is certain economic classes, and the colonial gov- 
ernments are very likely to be controlled by colonial 
capitalists. Those capitalists are not suffering 
from the Great Illusion. They know quite defi- 
nitely that it is more profitable for them to secure 
a privilege than to have someone else secure it. 

The Great Illusion, such as it is, must be in the 
belief of French peasants and artisans and shop- 
keepers that they have something to gain by en- 
riching French capitalists in Africa. But even 
here I am not altogether sure that it is a total 
illusion. The workingmen in a tariff-protected 
industry are generally protectionists ; the railroad 
workers are not hostile to high rates. They be- 
lieve that they can either share the profits of privi- 
lege, or that if the privilege were wiped out they 
would be ruined. Introduce free trade in the 
United States and thousands of workingmen 
would be thrown out of employment ; reduce rail- 
road rates too drastically and the railwaymen 



120 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

must abandon hope of wage increases. In like 
manner, if you create a real open door in subject 
territory, if you allow fierce competition, the 
workmen at home who produce for the colonial 
export trade will suffer. If they suffer, the shop- 
keepers from whom they buy, their landlords, and 
their dependents will suffer. Out of these people 
there arises public opinion at home to back capi- 
talists abroad. 

It may still be true that the people in general 
would gain by free trade, which is only another 
name for the Open Door. But the people in gen- 
eral do not exist except in the minds of philoso- 
phers. The people who are heard from are those 
whose profits and livelihood depend upon these 
privileges. They are the only ones sufficiently 
interested to care. To all the other people the 
problem seems thin and academic: they are too 
busy to fight privileged groups in the interest of 
what to them is a vague ideal of internationalism. 
Moreover, they are, on the whole, convinced that 
any increase of colonial wealth will help rather 
than hurt them. 

There is rarely an interest powerful enough in 
any country to force its colonial administration 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 121 

into a loyal observance of the spirit and letter of 
the promise given to the world. There is almost 
never a political power at home sufficiently active 
to make the administration of a weak state a dis- 
interested service to the international community. 
The groups directly interested in breaking the 
promise are too constantly at work. They appear 
as " national interests," evoke patriotism ; they 
corrupt and destroy the guarantees given to the 
world. 

But they are not unopposed. The groups in 
other countries in whose faces the door has been 
shut protest to their governments. Their govern- 
ments take up the matter diplomatically, and an 
issue has been raised between the nations. The 
Germans claim, for example, that the French did 
not live up to the agreements about Morocco, that 
the visit of the Emperor to the Sultan of Tangiers, 
the sending of the Panther to Agadir, were at- 
tempts to make France discuss her Moroccan 
policy with the governments of Europe. I cannot 
pretend to know the real facts of the situation, 
but it is difficult not to believe that there is some 
truth in the German claim. There may have been 
less truth than the actions of Germany warranted, 



122 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

but there is every human reason for suspecting 
that Morocco was dominated less in the interests 
of the world than in the interests of French 
colonial capitalists. 

For the purposes of this argument it is not im- 
portant to decide the exact truth of the issue. I 
have read English and French and Belgian com- 
ment which agreed with Germany; I have read 
German comment which agreed with France. But 
the main lesson of the business is that the issue is 
difficult to settle, that the only way open for set- 
tling it was by diplomacy between the German 
government and the Entente Powers. But such 
diplomacy could never be limited to the Moroccan 
problem alone. The vexed question of whether 
the claims of the Mannesmann Brothers were fic- 
titious or real became inevitably a European prob- 
lem in which every irritation, every blindness of 
patriotism, rose up to cloud the issue. The Moroc- 
can affair ceased to be a matter of determining 
claims ; it became an effort to test the solidity of 
the Entente, a question of prestige. It was a small 
match which on two occasions almost set off an 
immense powder magazine. 

Some English liberals have protested vigorously 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIK 123 

against the idea that England should have threat- 
ened war with Germany to support the French 
policy in Morocco. They dismiss, quite rightly, 
the notion that England's action was based on a 
conviction that the French had abstract justice on 
their side. No nation risks war for the sake of 
abstract justice in some corner of the world. 
These English liberals then point out that England 
stood to lose economically by the French policy in 
Morocco. Why did England do what she did.f* 

She' did it for what we Americans call " log- 
rolling " reasons. She supported France in 
Morocco because she wanted French support in 
Egypt and elsewhere. She did it to preserve the 
Entente, to resist what she felt was German ag- 
gression. The English liberals often point to the 
secret pact with France. Whether it was moral 
or immoral, wise or unwise, need not be dis- 
cussed. The significance of it for us is that the 
Anglo-French harmony was like a political party 
in which one congressman agrees to vote for an- 
other congressman's appropriation in exchange 
for support of his own. The Entente and the 
Teutonic Alliance were the two political parties 
of the world which made non-partisan government 



124 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

of weak territory impossible. Yet non-partisan- 
ship is what the Open Door promises. Just as 
Democrats and Republicans will cover each other 
with mud in a quarrel over a two-thousand-dollar 
appointment, so these nations of Europe, lined up 
into political coalitions, have covered each other 
with blood over a series of quarrels about privi- 
leges in backward states. 

Let me make myself clear: I do not think Europe 
is fighting about any particular privilege in the 
Balkans or in Africa. I think she is fighting be- 
cause Europe had been divided into two groups 
which clashed again and again over the organiza- 
tion of the backward parts of the world. Those 
clashes involved prestige, called forth national sus- 
picions, created the armaments, and after a while 
no question could be settled on its merits. Each 
question involved the standing of the Powers, each 
question was a test of relative strength. No 
nation felt it could afford to lose even if it hap- 
pened to be wrong. Since no question could be 
settled, every question continued to pour its poison 
into the European mind. It was the memory of 
diplomatic defeats, the fear of future defeats, that 
in July, 1914, had made European diplomacy in- 



A LITTLE REALPOLITIX 125 

capable of preserving the peace. The struggle had 
hardened the governing mind to a point where stub- 
born insistence and uninventive appeals for peace 
were all that was left. 

The mind of Europe collapsed. The appeal to 
arms was the result of that criminal recklessness 
which decides to hack its way through when no 
other solution presents itself to the mind. We 
tinker futilely with a machine until in exasperation 
we kick it. But when Europe is through kicking 
itself to pieces it will have to start tinkering again. 
The problems which drove it to the war will still 
require constructive solutions. Those problems 
arose out of the chaos and backwardness of weak 
states. This war will have increased the chaos and 
the backwardness. It will leave all Europe ex- 
hausted for the work. It may change the Balance 
of Power, but whatever the relative position of 
the nations at the end, they will have to resume 
their interrupted work of making the whole world 
politically fit for modern commerce. They may 
listen to one Power more and to another less, but 
the bedazzled and flouted task of internationalizing 
the unorganized earth will continue to demand 
their attention. They may fight " to the last man," 



126 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

but they will not escape the problem, nor by fight- 
ing can they solve it. They can perhaps exhaust 
themselves so thoroughly that Africa and Asia will 
be too strong to be " civilized " by Europe. But 
the chances are that they will begin again to re- 
build the international structure which they built 
so badly and wrecked so hideously. 



CHAPTER IX 

A PROPOSAL 

The point I have been making will, I fear, seem 
a paradox to many readers, — that the anarchy of 
the world is due to the backwardness of weak 
states ; that the modern nations have lived in an 
armed peace and collapsed into hideous warfare 
because in Asia, Africa, the Balkans, Central and 
South America there are rich territories in which 
weakness invites exploitation, in which inefficiency 
and corruption invite imperial expansion, in which 
the prizes are so great that the competition for 
them is to the knife. 

This is the world problem upon which all 
schemes for arbitration, leagues of peace, reduc- 
tion of armaments must prove themselves. The 
diplomats have in general recognized this. It was 
commonly said for a generation that Europe would 
be lucky if it escaped a general war over the break- 
up of Turkey in Europe. The Sick Man has 
infected the Continent. Our own " preparedness " 

campaign is based on the fear that the defenseless- 
127 



128 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ness of Latin- America will invite European aggres- 
sion, that the defenselessness of China will bring 
on a struggle in the Pacific. Few informed people 
imagine for a moment that any nation of the world 
contemplates seizing or holding our own territory. 
That would be an adventure so ridiculous that no 
statesman would think of it. If we get into trouble 
it will be over some place like Mexico, or Haiti, or 
the Philippines, or the Panama Canal, or Man- 
churia, or Hawaii. 

Our Monroe Doctrine has meant, in a rough 
way, that this hemisphere was not to be made part 
of the stakes of diplomacy. We have regarded it 
as an announcement to Europe that if any force 
was to be used in regulating the weak American 
republics, the United States alone would use that 
force. We almost went to war with England in 
1896 because we insisted that the United States, 
not Great Britain, was the policeman of Venezuela. 
During our Civil War France sent an army into 
Mexico. We were too weak to stop her. We were, 
in fact, for the time being, one of the disorderly 
parts of the world, and we invited aggression. 
But when the Union was saved, France had to with' 
draw from Mexico, 



A PROPOSAL 129 

Experts in international affairs tell us that the 
Monroe Doctrine has really been nothing but a 
gigantic bluff made possible by the fact that 
Europe was so busy it did not dare to risk war with 
us. Europe, especially Great Britain, has let us 
hold the Doctrine. But it has implied that we must 
be responsible for the protection of trade and 
capital and life. In other words, we can have 
the Monroe Doctrine if we act as international 
guardian of the weak Americas. If we failed to do 
that, Europe would call us to account. She would 
undoubtedly have called us to account long ago 
over Mexico if it had not been for the war. 

Just now President Wilson is trying to re- 
organize Mexico. He plans to pacify the country, 
not as an imperial act, but as a Pan-American 
duty. The outcome is not clear, the difficulties are 
enormous. But the point which needs to be borne 
in mind is that the Monroe Doctrine, Pan-American 
action, and the rest of the paraphernalia are the 
existing machinery through which Mr. Wilson can 
exercise some of the functions of a world govern- 
ment. If an actual world state existed, Mexico 
would be policed by international force. No such 
world state exists, but the Monroe Doctrine and 



ISO THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

Pan- Americanism are attempts to fill the vacuum. 
The need is so great that these substitutes have had 
to be invented. 

Europe has also recognized that some kind of 
world government must be created. The phrase 
world government, of course, arouses immediate 
opposition; the idea of a European legislature 
would be pronounced Utopian. Yet there have 
been a number of European legislatures. The 
Berlin Conference of 1885 was called to discuss 
" freedom of commerce in the basin and mouths of 
the Congo ; application to the Congo and Niger of 
the principles adopted at the Congress of Vienna 
with a view to preserve freedom of navigation on 
certain international rivers . . . and a definition 
of formalities to be observed so that new occupa- 
tions on the African coasts shall be deemed ef- 
fective." The Powers represented made all sorts 
of reservations, but they managed to pass a 
" General Act of the West African Conference." 
The Congo Free State was recognized. As Mr. 
Harris says : ^ " Bismarck saw in this a means of 
preventing armed conflict over the Congo Basin, 

of restricting the Portuguese advance, and of pre- 
' Intervention and Colonization in Africa, by Norman 
Dwight Harris, p. 28. 



A PROPOSAL 131 

serving the region to free trade." What was it 
that Bismarck saw? He saw that the great wealth 
of the Congo and its political weakness might make 
trouble in Europe unless the Congo was organized 
into the legal structure of the world. 

The Conference at Algeciras was an interna- 
tional legislature in which even the United States 
was represented ; the London Conference after the 
Balkan wars was a gathering of ambassadors try- 
ing to legislate out of existence the sources of 
European trouble in the Balkans. But all these 
legislatures have had one great fault. They met, 
they passed laws, they adjourned, and left the 
enforcement of their mandate to the conscience of 
the individual Powers. The legislature was inter- 
national, but the executive was merely national. 
The legislature moreover had no way of checking 
up or controlling the executive. The representa- 
tives of all the nations would pass laws for the 
government of weak territories, but the translation 
of those laws into practice was left to the colonial 
bureaucrats of some one nation. 

If the law was not carried out, to whom would 
an appeal be made? Not to the Conference, for it 
had ceased to exist. There was no way in which a 



132 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

European legislature could recall the officials who 
did not obey its will. Those officials were respon- 
sible to their home government, although they were 
supposed to be executing a European mandate. 
Those who were injured had also to appeal to their 
home government, and the only way to remedy an 
abuse or even sift out the truth of an allegation 
was by negotiation between the Powers. This 
raised the question of their sovereignty, called 
forth patriotic feeling, revived a thousand memo- 
ries, and made any satisfactory interpretation of 
the European Act or any criticism of its adminis- 
tration a highly explosive adventure. 

Suppose, for example, that Congress had power 
to pass laws, but that the execution of them was 
left to the states. Suppose New York had its 
own notions of tariff administration. How would 
the other states compel the New York customs 
officials to execute the spirit and letter of the 
federal law? Suppose every criticism by Penn- 
sylvania of a New York Collector was regarded as 
an infringement of New York's sovereignty, as a 
blow at New York's pride, what kind of chaos 
would we suffer from? Yet that is the plight of 
our world society. 



A PROPOSAL 133 

The beginnings of a remedy would seem to lie 
in not disbanding these European conferences when 
they have passed a law. They ought to continue 
in existence as a kind of senate, meeting from 
time to time. They ought to regard themselves as 
watchers over the legislation which they have 
passed. To them could be brought grievances, by 
them amendments could be passed when needed. 
The colonial officials should at least be made to 
report to this senate, and all important matters 
of policy should be laid open to its criticism and 
suggestion. In this way a problem like that of 
Morocco, for example, might be kept localized to 
a permanent European Conference on Morocco. 
Europe would never lose its grip on the situation, 
because it would have representatives on the spot 
watching the details of administration, in a position 
to learn the facts, and with a real opportunity for 
stating grievances. 

The development of such a senate would prob- 
ably be towards an increasing control of colonial 
officials. At first it would have no power of ap- 
pointment or removal. It would be limited to 
criticism. But it Is surely not fantastic to sup- 
pose that the colonial civil service would in time 



134 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

be internationalized ; that is to say, opened to men 
of different nationalities. The senate, if it de- 
veloped any traditions, would begin to supervise 
the budget, would fight for control of salaries, and 
might well take over the appointing power alto- 
gether. It would become an upper house for the 
government of the protected territorj', not essen- 
tially different perhaps from the American Philip- 
pine Commission. The lower house would be native, 
and there would probably be a minority of natives 
in the senate. The liberal Powers would undoubt- 
edly clash with the others over the policy to be 
presented as the natives rose to self-consciousness 
and demanded increasing power in their own 
country. 

An organization of this kind would meet all the 
difficulties that our Continental Congress or that 
any other primitive legislature has had to deal with. 
There would be conflicts of jurisdiction, puzzling 
questions of interpretation, and some place of 
final appeal would have to be provided. It might 
be the Senate of European representatives ; but if 
the Senate deadlocked, an appeal might be taken 
to The Hague. The details of all this are ob- 
viously speculative at the moment. 



A PROPOSAL 135 

The important point is that there should be 
in existence permanent international commissions 
to deal with those spots of the earth where world 
crises originate. How many there should be need 
not be suggested here. There should have been one 
for Morocco, for the Congo, for the Balkan penin- 
sula, perhaps for Manchuria ; there may have to be 
one for Constantinople, for certain countries fac- 
ing the Caribbean Sea. Such international gov- 
erning bodies are needed wherever the prizes are 
great, the territory unorganized, and the com- 
petition active. 

The idea is not over-ambitious. It seems to me 
the necessary development of schemes which Euro- 
pean diplomacy has been playing with for some 
time. It represents an advance along the line 
that governments, driven by necessity, have been 
taking of their own accord. What makes it espe- 
cially plausible is that it grasps the real problems 
of diplomacy, that it provides not a panacea but a 
method and the beginnings of a technique. It Is 
internationalism, not spread thin as a Parliament 
of Man, but sharply limited to those areas of 
friction where internationalism is most obviously 
needed. 



CHAPTER X 

ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 

The proposal made in the last chapter differs in 
many important ways from the peace programmes 
now being discussed in England and America. 
The differences are in themselves worth discussing 
because they throw into relief some of the real 
issues of world organization. 

The magic word in America to-day is arbitra- 
tion. The song " I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be 
a Soldier " contains the sincere, though unmusical, 
lines, 

" Let nations arbitrate their future troubles. 
It's time to lay the sword and gun away." 

On a Chautauqua circuit the orator can almost 
always draw applause by insisting that war is as 
obsolete as dueling, that nations should settle their 
differences in court and not on the battlefield. 
The idea seems to be that diplomats should be as 
reasonable as possible, and that when they can- 
186 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 137 

not come to agreement the case should be taken 
to the Hague Tribunal and settled for them. 

The fatal flaw of the scheme is, of course, that 
nations will arbitrate only their unimportant dif- 
ferences. They will not, and cannot, arbitrate such 
matters as the relative prestige of Germany and 
England, the right of the Entente to fight a diplo- 
matic war with the Dual Alliance, or what the 
balance of power is to be in future negotiations 
about Africa and Asia. There is no court which 
can help the anger of Republicans at being " en- 
circled " by Democrats in the solid South. Yet 
the alignment of nations is more like the alignment 
of political parties than it is like the opposition 
of two men engaged in a lawsuit. Behind most of 
the specific differences between nations looms the 
conviction that the quarrel is a test of strength. 
They are afraid of losing not only the actual 
dispute, but their prestige in future disputes. 
Thus Prince Biilow, in explaining the German 
government's position to his ambassador in Lon- 
don (April 15, 1905), writes: " We are acting in 
regard to our interests, of which there is appar- 
ently the desire to dispose without our assent. 
The importance of these interests is in this corir 



138 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

nection a secondary matter. . . . We possess eco- 
nomic interests in Morocco. ... If, by our si- 
lence, we renounce them, we shall then encourage 
the world, which is watching us, to adopt a similar 
lack of consideration to our detriment in other 
questions, perhaps more important." 

Again, on April 28, 1905, he writes to his am- 
bassador in Paris : " If a great Power were to 
admit this fashion of ignoring its existence, the 
said Power would be incurring inconvenience in the 
future, not to say dangers. The material value 
of the threatened interests only comes in here as 
a secondary factor." So the diplomats describe 
their interest as a vital interest involving honor 
which is not justiciable. They mean, as Prince 
Billow says, that the merits of the controversy are 
less important than the loss or gain of influence. 

Moreover, it is very difficult to see how a court 
could arbitrate the important matters. A court 
consists of judges. These judges can take a treaty 
and " interpret " it — that is to say, they can say 
what they believe it means. They can make a 
human judgment about evidence submitted and 
issue a decree. But as everyone knows, there are 
more ways than one of frustrating any legal de- 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 139 

cision : the letter of the law can be observed and 
the spirit denied. The Hague Court has no ma- 
chinery for following up its decree, no way of 
controlling the administrative effects of its deci- 
sions. It gives a static interpretation of static 
treaties and hopes they will apply reasonably to 
dynamic conditions. The' Court must frankly 
enunciate judge-made law for new conditions or 
it will forever be trying to fit antiquated formulae 
to the complexity of life. 

All this means that the Hague Court is impo- 
tent without legislation and without executive. It 
can deal with minor points where the will not to 
fight is strong, but it is certain to break down 
where the dander is up, where nations feel that the 
law is archaic, or that the execution of it is unfair. 
Germany's real quarrel with the Entente has been 
that it was insisting upon the sanctification of 
international laws that had been outgrown, that 
those laws were conservative, and were fatal to her 
progress. She wanted not a legal interpretation of 
existing law, but a revision of it. In that desire 
the Germans say they were blocked at every point. 
Now by what process at The Hague could the law 
have been altered.'* The Court could hardly do 



140 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

much more than interpret the very law to which 
Germany objected, unless the Court was to make 
itself into a European legislature. But the na- 
tions would not to-day tolerate such usurpation of 
power by international judges. 

These difficulties are, it seems to me, supreme. 
Arbitration will fail at the crucial points, because 
the real need is for lawmaking and control of 
administration. As a great American statesman 
has said : " I was willing to arbitrate the dispute 
over such-and-such because I knew we were sure 
to win." He would not have submitted the matter 
to arbitration if he had not been sure of the re- 
sult. This sentiment among governments has one 
result: nothing will induce them to arbitrate an 
important point unless they feel sure the Court 
will be with them. 

Many pacifists have seized upon this defect of 
the Hague idea and tried to find a remedy for it. 
They say that there must be international force to 
compel arbitration and to sanction its decrees. 
The result is the proposed League of Peace, an 
agreement that all nations will fight any one na- 
tion which refuses to submit its quarrels to .The 
Hague. 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 141 

Such a league might keep the peace, but it would 
be a very unsatisfactory peace. It would mean 
that small countries like Holland, Denmark, and 
Switzerland would be drawn at once into a quarrel 
between Great Britain and Germany. It would 
mean that the French peasants on the Meuse lived 
in fear and trembling at the prospect that they 
would have to take part in a war between, let us 
say, Germany and the United States. Belgium 
and Poland would be the battlefields of every at- 
tempt to compel Germany to arbitrate her ambi- 
tions. The League is really an Anglo-American 
idea, a rather comfortable proposal on our part 
to make others bear the brunt of our troubles. 
It is a plan profoundly unjust in its distribution 
of costs. It is obviously, though unconsciously, 
of course, devised in the selfish interest of the na- 
tions which are not likely to be invaded. 

Even if it were feasible, it would not meet the 
situation. When a nation had been buUied into 
arbitration, the Hague Court would still be an 
inadequate instrument for meeting the situation. 
It would still be unable to legislate or to control 
administration. 

The whole idea seems to be based on a false con- 



142 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ception of the world problem. It contains no 
method for organizing the world, for dealing day 
by day with the weak spots which are the areas 
of friction. When the fire is just about to break 
out, arbitration arrives with a teaspoonful of 
water. It offers no technique for the constructive 
elimination of the causes of war; it merely tries 
to stop war when the causes have operated to the 
breaking point. It has hindsight and it lacks 
foresight. It acts on the mistaken notion that 
the quarrels of nations are over specific points, and 
fails to recognize that what the world needs is 
not the adjudication of deadlocks, but the per- 
sistent, creative administration of those terri- 
tories where deadlocks are likely to occur. Arbi- 
tration is always too late, even when it is success- 
ful. It is applied onjy when the quarrel has 
aroused patriotism, has become a " vital interest," 
has grown to proportions where defeat is more 
than a nation will endure. 

The scheme is a bashful attempt to create a 
world state out of courts alone. A world state 
is meaningless without legislative and executive 
powers. It is all very well to talk of going to 
court instead of fighting a duel, but if there were 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 14S 

no legislature which had power to make laws and 
no executive to enforce them we should continue 
to fight duels. The mere fact that there were men 
called judges ready to decide about laws which 
were vague in the minds of judges and unsatis- 
factory to everyone would not compel much 
loyalty. 

Realizing this, many people dream of a Federa- 
tion of the World, with a Parliament of Man, a 
World Police, World Courts, and World Officials. 
It is a valiant dream which will be realized if this 
planet is to fulfill man's best hopes. It is clearly 
the goal of humane political endeavor, and no 
civilized man can afford to sneer at it or to lay 
it altogether outside his mind. Its difficulties to- 
day are obvious. They are chiefly these: that too 
few people desire such a world state, that such 
a world state to-day would be tyrannical to 
weaker peoples, that the administrative capacity 
of the peoples of the earth is not yet ready for it, 
that no Parliament of Man could possibly know 
enough or find time enough to deal with the enor- 
mous complexities of the earth. The British Par- 
liament is choked with the mere volume of business 
which imperial and domestic affairs put before it. 



144 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

A World Parliament would collapse under its tre- 
mendous burdens. 

The Hague plan, with all its ramifications, fails 
because it lacks the essentials of government — 
legislative and executive power. The World State 
is at present too ambitious. The proposal I have 
ventured to make provides for a series of local 
world governments, each charged with some one of 
the world problems. Developed out of the idea of 
world conferences like that about the Congo and 
Morocco, it would construct a number of minia- 
ture world legislatures, with the hope that they 
would become localized organs of a world state. 
No step proposed goes very far beyond existing 
experience. In some parts of the world the cus- 
toms or the debt is internationally administered 
(Turkey, for example, and China) ; for others 
there have been European legislatures (such as 
the Berlin Congress of 1885) dependent upon na- 
tional administration ; in some places the courts are 
extraterritorial (China; Turkey till recently). 
The suggestion is that the legislature be made 
permanent, that the administration be coordinated 
with it. There would thus be established full- 
fledged world governments limited to special 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMAEK 145 

areas. They would demand in the beginning 
no more relinquishment of national sovereignty 
than the experience and sense of the world has 
already fairly well agreed to. 

The case of Morocco is illuminating because it 
shows the older diplomacy experimenting with the 
rudiments of a world state. Back in 1880 Morocco 
was seen to be an international problem, and a 
convention was held at Madrid to discuss her af- 
fairs. Everybody concerned protested loudly his 
unalterable attachment to the integrity of Morocco 
and to equal trading rights for all nations. There 
is no use pretending that these professions were 
loyally carried out. France, Spain, Great Britain, 
and Germany were involved in bargains, demands, 
and adventures of all kinds which made Moroccan 
independence and the open door fairly idle words. 
Then the German Emperor paid his visit to Tan- 
giers, and some months later the European nations 
and the United States met at Algeciras and cre- 
ated a kind of world charter for the future of 
Morocco. 

Some of the details of the Algeciras Act show 
very clearly that the need for international gov- 
ernment was felt by the diplomats in 1905 to be a 



146 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

practical consideration for statesmanship. They 
would not have called it a bit of world government, 
but here are some of the things they provided for 
in the act, which was itself the work of an inter- 
national legislature: 

A police force was to be raised under the " sov- 
ereign " (!) authority of the Sultan and dis- 
tributed among the eight commercial ports. 
From forty-six to sixty French and Spanish offi- 
cers approved by the Sultan were to help or- 
ganize the force for five years; a Swiss was to be 
made inspector-general for five years. He was 
to report to the Moorish government, but a copy 
of his reports was to be handed to the Diplomatic 
Body at Tangier. 

The Morocco State Bank was to be established. 
It was to be disbursing treasurer and financial 
agent of the Moorish Empire. Spanish money 
was made legal tender; French corporation law 
was to apply to the bank, and, finally, it was pro- 
vided that the German Imperial Bank, the Bank 
of England, the Bank of Spain, and the Bank of 
France should each appoint a censor to watch 
over the administration. 

There were provisions about taxes, acquisition 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 147 

of property, custom duties, navigation, and pub- 
lic works — the execution was to be settled by agree- 
ment between the Moorish government and the 
Diplomatic Body at Tangier. Supervision of 
fraud and smuggling was placed in the hands of a 
mixed Customs Valuation Committee and a mixed 
Customs Committee. 

The awarding of contracts for public works was 
to be regulated by the Moorish government and 
the Diplomatic Body. Bids " without respect for 
nationality " were to be made on all public works 
and supply contracts. 

It was clearly an attempt to create an interna- 
tional rather than an imperial control of Morocco. 
Those diplomats at Algeciras were trying amidst 
enormous difficulties to solve the problem of the 
weak state by bringing it under the control not of 
one empire but of the united powers of the west- 
ern world. They saw that the only way out of the 
issues raised by defenseless rich territory is to 
make them dependencies of a World State. They 
saw that no one nation could be trusted to act as 
international steward, so they gave the whole 
Diplomatic Body a supervising control of certain 
aspects of administration. 



148 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

They failed. The international government 
they set up was torn to bits by intrigues and bar- 
gains, by the disrupting forces of nationalism. It 
is no new experience for the world. Whenever a 
government is constructed which calls for a loy- 
alty larger than the patriotism to which men are 
accustomed, it is very difficult to keep that gov- 
ernment going. When we think how difficult a 
task it was to bring about Italian, German, and 
American union, we need not be surprised that the | 
experiment with a World State to control Morocco 
should have ended in disastrous failure. French, 
Spanish, British, and German finance, bureaucratic 
ambition and national pride played the same part 
that " state's rights," " particularism," " separa- 
tion " have always played in the world. They 
were unloyal, uncontrollable, and destructive. •' 

But just as no vigorous man would abandon the 
idea of American union because the Articles of 
Confederation were a failure, or because state's 
rights threatened to break the government in 1861, 
so men to-day dare not turn away from the path 
marked out at Algeciras. If the world is to be 
saved from the hideous clashing of empires, it must 
establish a world control in the territories where 



ALGECIRAS: A LANDMARK 149 

the clashes occur. Algeciras, though a failure, is 
a great precedent, the most hopeful effort at world 
organization made up to the present. I venture to 
say that if the spirit of the Algeciras Act had 
been realized it would have been more important 
than all the Hague rules about how to fight in 
" civilized " fashion, all the arbitration treaties, 
all the reduction of armament proposals with which 
the earth is deluged. Algeciras grasped the prob- 
lem of diplomacy — the conflict of empires in weak 
territory. Algeciras gallantly tried to introduce 
a world government to control it. The men at 
Algeciras failed. If we cannot succeed where they 
failed, the outlook for the future is desperate. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 

Peace foundations and universities could not do 
a more useful work than to make an exhaustive, 
analytical study of the international failure at 
Morocco. If we knew with any certainty why the 
spirit and the letter of the Algeciras Act were 
frustrated, why imperialism conquered interna- 
tionalism, we should have an invaluable experi- 
ence for the future. At present the whole con- 
troversy is in the hands either of desperate patriots 
or desperate anti-patriots, the facts, the interpre- 
tations, the conclusions are a seething mass of un- 
certainty. Morocco made Europe see red; the 
literature of the subject, written several years ago, 
is blind with the fury and apprehension of this war. 
Though it is impossible now to arrive at any 
exact judgment of this infinitely complex situa- 
tion, it is useful, I think, to imagine and sketch 
out a working hypothesis. What are the probable 
factors which defeat the attempt to internation- 
150 



THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 151 

alize the control of a backward state? They may 
perhaps be described as follows: 

Missionaries, explorers, adventurers, prospect- 
ors come back home with tales of unbounded 
wealth. The tales are told to merchants with 
goods to sell, to capitalists with money to invest, 
to church congresses with a gospel to spread. Pri- 
vate companies are formed to exploit the new mar- 
ket and the new riches. Their directors at home 
consult with the colonial officials and receive what 
are rather vague promises of support. The news 
of the venture spreads to the trading and financial 
centers of other nations ; they too begin to form 
companies and send out capital and goods. 

Trouble appears in the country which is being 
opened. It may be that the natives put exorbitant 
custom duties on merchandise; it may be that in 
transacting business the invading business men 
outrage local superstitions ; it may be that an in- 
solent missionary is killed in a riot ; it may be that 
business rivals stir up the natives against one 
another. The newspapers at home are furnished 
with lurid accounts of anarchy and of the danger 
to their " nationals." At the same time some 
concessionaire company may be working on the 



152 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

feeling of the bureaucracy at home with the object 
of securing some important monopoly — perhaps 
an exclusive franchise, perhaps the control of 
mines, perhaps harbor rights or navigation facil- 
ities on a river. The anarchy in the country fur- 
nishes not only a justification but a pretext, too, 
and some kind of intervention takes place. There 
are visions of manifest destiny and the white man's 
burden among those who have read too much Kip- 
ling or smoked too many cigarettes in their edi- 
torial careers. The other Powers, also having 
manifest destinies and ambitious financiers, protest 
at the intervention and ask an accounting. Then, 
after much gnashing of teeth and an unlimited out- 
flow of careless patriotism, a European conference 
meets to deal with the situation. 

The well-known psychology of a horse deal is 
naive and trusting compared to the state of mind 
in which the diplomats take up the international 
task. They bristle with dignity, they are explosive 
with prestige, they are rigid with notions of sov- 
ereignty. The problem before them is not treated 
on its merits. It is set in magnificent and in- 
definite theories of world politics, and practically 
every judgment is based by the grand strategy 



THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 153 

of international diplomacy. Between intrigue, 
secret understandings, and a morbid national van- 
ity, the negotiations are carried on and an act is 
framed. The act is passed by the conference 
either in the name of humanity or, as at Algeciras, 
" in the name of God Almighty." The act is, of 
course, a compromise, and so far as the machinery 
of enforcement goes, it is in large measure an 
evasion. Nevertheless it represents an interna- 
tional effort to deal with an international problem. 

Unfortunately the act provides for no modifica- 
tion or development except in so far as the phrases 
of it are vague enough to be interpreted in many 
different ways. The act becomes a set of verbal 
announcements, which it is hoped wiU cover the 
new situations which arise or are created. It 
doesn't, to be sure. Even supposing that each 
nation were scrupulously loyal to the act, the act 
would in the natural course of events soon become 
antiquated. An act which is antiquated soon 
loses the little respect it commanded, and the way 
is open for intrigue and adventure to destroy the 
whole intention of it. 

There is every incentive to do this. The trad- 
ing and financial groups of any one nationality 



154 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

are seduced constantly by the vision of the money 
they could make if only they had more political 
power. The strongest group loses no opportunity 
to get the better of weaker ones ; the weaker ones 
retaliate. Under cover of the international act 
governing the territory, different concessionaire 
groups plot and fight for control. They use na- 
tional pride to support them ; they work them- 
selves into the confidence of the imperialist poli- 
ticians and editors. Their own motives are not 
always clear to them, and to the people at home 
they are completely hidden. 

The tactics by which the international act can 
be destroyed are, of course, many. It may be that 
usurious loans are forced upon the helpless ruler 
of the exploited country, that his revenues are 
mortgaged to serve the debt, and that the pro- 
tection of those revenues becomes the excuse for 
intervention. It may be that border raids are 
instituted, that native tribes are aroused, that mer- 
chants or missionaries are declared to be in dan- 
ger. At any rate, whatever the methods used, the 
object is to create a new situation, meet it by some 
aggression, and then confront the other Powers 
with what diplomats call a fait accompli, a phrase 



THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 155 

which means " What are you going to do about 
it? " They can either go to war about it, or 
'■ seek compensation elsewhere." In either case 
the international experiment is destroyed. 

The proposal advocated in this book is that the 
international control should be turned into a local 
international government, with power to legislate 
and to hold administrative officials accountable. 
This would at least give internationalism a chance. 
For instead of a rigid act with practically no ma- 
chinery of enforcement, there would exist a living 
legislature with some means for carrying out its 
will. The scheme would make it possible to meet 
a new situation as it arose, instead of allowing the 
world to be faced with the curse of a fait accompli. 

But, clearly enough, the scheme, if set in motion, 
would be still the prey of intrigue and disruption. 
The new government, just because it might be 
strong and efficient, would make enemies. What 
then can be done to fortify it.? 

I take it that no government has any chance of 
survival unless it serves the interests of powerful 
economic groups. The problem, it seems to me, 
is to transfer the allegiance of concessionaires, 
financiers, missionaries, and merchants from their 



156 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

own national government to this international 
government. If they support it, there is a chance 
of its success. If they fight it, failure is certain. 
The only way to do this would appear to be by 
handing over the protection of outgoing traders 
and capitalists and adventurers to these local in- 
ternational governments. Unless the national 
governments are willing to say that investments 
and markets abroad must not look for protection 
at home, there is no incentive to strengthen the 
international government in the backward state, i 
In other words, the people at home must say to 
their foreign traders and capitalists : " When you 
enter territory which is internationally organized 
you are expected to obey its laws and look to it 
for protection. We have backed you up hitherto 
because no adequate government existed in these 
backward states. Now it does exist, and we are 
no longer under any obligation to risk wars in 
order to protect you. If you are not satisfied 
with the treatment accorded you, appeal to The 
Hague, but appeal as a private citizen and not as 
one of our ' nationals.' We may, perhaps, if your 
case is good, help you by diplomatic argument 
to the international government. But you must 



THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 157 

under no circumstances feel that the military forces 
of this country are at your disposal." 

If that were the condition, the foreign trader 
would be compelled to strengthen the international 
government, to acknowledge citizenship in it, and 
interest himself in making it efficient and useful. 
So long as he trusts in his home government for 
special support and special privilege he will re- 
main an enemy of internationalism. Only when he 
is thrown upon the mercy of international gov- 
ernment will he have any stimulus to loyalty. 

His case may be illuminated by imagining the 
situation if no federal government existed in the 
United States, and if capitalists from New York 
or Illinois were beginning to open up Alaska. 
They would be forever appealing and intriguing 
in New York and Illinois politics. But with 
Alaska under federal control. New York can wash 
its hands of the capitalist, and his dealings are 
with the federal government. He may stiU plot 
for special advantages, but his plots cannot em- 
broil the states, and they serve as an object lesson 
for the increasing power of the federal gov- 
ernment. 

If in a backward state men of all nationalities 



158 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

had to cease running home to mother, if they were 
tied up securely to the conduct of the Interna- 
tional state, they would have to learn to manage 
that state. There would be conflicts of interests, 
corruption, bargains, just as there are in any other 
government, but the sheer need of protection — 
the primitive want of " law and order " — ^would 
attach the more substantial economic groups to 
the international power. Concessionaires, bureau- 
crats, traders would discover vested interests in 
it. The spoils and the protection, all the ad- 
vantages of government, in fact, would be cen- 
tered in an international administration and fairly 
well localized to one area. For a long time such an 
administration would probably be a spectacle of 
capitalist control, native oppression, log-rolling, 
pork-barrel legislation, and what not. But all 
these evils now accompany imperialism, which car- 
ries with it always the hideous possibility of im- 
perial wars. To set up international states in 
certain territories is to construct the only possible 
substitute for imperialism. And we must neither 
be too surprised nor too pained if international 
government for a long time is not a golden 
brotherhood of man. Internationalism will not 



THE CORE OF IMPERIALISM 159 

rise much higher than its source. If it comes, 
therefore, from nations that are competitive, capi- 
talistic, and filled with corruption, it will bear all 
the marks of its origin. Even then it will be a 
comparative blessing to the world. 

The crux of our. problem is whether the flag 
is to follow trade. The task of internationalism 
depends on whether it can destroy the theory that 
a man must rely on his home government for sup- 
port when he ventures into backward countries. 
This is the central nerve of imperialism, and our 
business is to excise it. We cannot do that, how- 
ever, until we substitute for national support some 
kind of international organization. . The proposal 
to organize these local world administrations is an 
attempt to create an agency to which a nation can 
hand over the protection of its nationals abroad. 
For the excuse, the power, the prestige of imperial- 
ism depend upon the theory that the flag covers 
its citizens in backward territory. 



PART III 



CHAPTER XII 

THE REACTION AT HOME 

" Touch me," says the hero to the Hottentot 
chief, " and to-morrow morning you will be look- 
ing into the angry eyes of a hundred million 
American citizens." No audience within the mem- 
ory of the oldest theatrical producer has ever 
failed to respond. Nor does it seem to make much 
difference what the " Touch me " means. It may 
relate to the hero's safety, or to his honor, or 
to his just rights, or to what he thinks are his 
just rights, or to what he thinks is due him as a 
good fellow and a superior person. The people 
at home have no way of knowing the truth about 
their compatriots abroad, and distance invariably 
lends enchantment. The abused person abroad 
may be a dirty scoundrel, but how is patriotism to 
discriminate.? He is in a foreign land, he claims 
to be abused, he wraps himself in the flag, a great 
nation cannot disown her sons. 

The activities of some of these sons are lurid 
168 



164 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

and hideous. Thrusting themselves upon some un- 
worldly people, they often debauch it with cruel 
cynicism. The easiest trade is firearms and spirits. 
They ply that trade. They extort concessions 
from natives who do not realize their value ; they 
force usurious loans upon the potentate till they 
have got him sewed up beyond all possibility of 
escape. They bribe native officials, and keep the 
finances of the country in bankrupt chaos. To 
serve the debt they secure mortgages on the reve- 
nues, and drive the rulers of the country to tyr- 
annous taxation. This in turn produces revolts, 
which the inefficient government, with its cor- 
rupted and badly paid army, is unable to handle. 
Under these conditions legitimate commerce suf- 
fers, and innocent people are endangered. In any 
one of these activities the adventurers can claim 
to be acting on their " rights " and " upholding 
their national interests," and in most cases the 
government at home will back them up with ulti- 
mata and a parade of force. 

It is never possible to say how much of the dis- 
order is due to trickery and intrigue, how much 
to sheer native incompetence. There is no way of 
knowing, for example, whether Persia would have 



THE REACTION AT HOME l65 

been reorganized and modernized if Russian offi- 
cials, abetted by the British, had not adopted one 
of the meanest policies of destruction in modem 
history. Perhaps it is not altogether important 
to distribute the blame accurately. These back- 
ward countries are at the mercy of their own gov- 
erning cliques and the foreign adventurers who 
are attracted by easy profits. If the Powers 
merely acted on the principle of " hands off," the 
situation would not be much better. Filibustering 
expeditions, bribery, tricky loans will not cease be- 
cause diplomacy ignores the situation. If coun- 
tries like Persia or Mexico are to become stable 
and powerful, their neighbors in the world have 
got to pursue a policy which is really sympa- 
thetic. They have got to refuse arms and sup- 
plies to rebels, they have got to control the terms 
of loans, they have got to protect the frail gov- 
ernment from insidious corruption. Mere laissez- 
faire is an invitation to the adventurer to let her 
rip. There is no way in which we can dodge the 
fact that we are deeply involved in the fate of 
backward countries. 

So long as they are disorderly and weak, they 
will lure in the concessionaire and the exploiter. 



166 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

who, whenever his rights or his life are endangered, 
will summon patriotism at home to defend him. 
And no government will under those conditions 
refuse support. An imperialist policy grows 
naturally and imperceptibly on defenseless terri- 
tory. Out of the clash of imperialist policies 
modern war arises. 

For if once these territories can be organ- 
ized, big profits cease, concession-hunting turns 
into legitimate investment, a more decent trade 
can flourish, the provocations to intervention dis- 
appear. You do not have to wrap the flag around 
trade in regions where a fairly modem government 
exists. There must be a flag, which represents 
order and power, but it need not be the flag under 
which the trader was born. The whole status of 
foreign nations is different in a small country like 
Denmark than it is in a small country like Persia. 
The difference lies in the fact that the government 
of Denmark is modern and stable, and that of 
Persia isn't. The question is not one of size, nor of 
military power, nor of dark races or white races. 
Japan is small and yellow, but the domestic affairs 
of Japan are not an international problem. China 
is large and yellow, and it is the most serious 



THE REACTION AT HOME 167 

question in the future of the world. The Scandi- 
navian countries are weak, they may be attacked, 
but they are not the objects of constant diplomatic 
meddling. They are not part of the stakes of 
diplomacy, because they have a modern political 
structure. 

A few people have remarked that the world- 
wide sympathy for Belgium was extraordinary in 
view of the treatment of Persia and China. Why, 
they ask, all the horror at this violation when vio- 
lation is not uncommon by any European Power? 
The answer is that the world has not the same 
attitude of mind towards a modern state that it has 
towards a weak and bankrupt one. Had Belgium 
been a chronic disorder in the heart of Europe, it 
would have been conquered and annexed long ago. 
It was the high organization of Belgium which 
had won for it recognition by the world. It was 
the fact that Belgium belonged to modernity and 
fought to defend its place that secured for it the 
affection of liberals everywhere. 

The small states are none of them secure, but 
the well-organized ones are perhaps as secure as 
the great empires. In a chaotic world they are 
occasionally trampled upon. So are the Great 



168 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

Powers., But the disorganized state is utterly in- 
secure. 

How to organize it is the chief task of diplo- 
macy. There are a number of general policies 
which may be pursued. One is to conquer it and 
administer it. This policy is falling more and 
more into disrepute, in part because the masses 
in civilized countries are anti-imperialist, but 
mainly because the Powers are unwilling to have 
any one Power aggrandize itself too much. An- 
other method is the protectorate, which means 
generally a control of finances and police. We 
are pursuing it in regard to Haiti. It has the 
advantage of giving a kind of invisible control 
without the oppressive arrogance of military oc- 
cupation. A country can sometimes be put on 
its feet by reorganizing its revenues without the 
friction which comes from daily interference with 
the private lives of its people. Another method 
is that of sending experts to a country, as we 
did to Persia, and allowing the experts to be serv- 
ants of the country which they are reconstructing. 
The weakness of this method is that the experts 
are at the mercy of intrigue when they have no 
backing from a great Power. 



THE REACTION AT HOME 169 

All of these policies have been tried in various 
places, not without some success.. But there are 
some portions of the globe so distracted, so eaten 
up by competing imperialisms, so full of " vital 
interests," so corroded with suspicion that none of 
these methods will work. Morocco was such a 
country, Constantinople is perhaps such a place, 
and China may well become one. For these some 
more heroic treatment is required, and so I have 
ventured to suggest what amounts to an interna- 
tional protectorate. Where the Powers are all 
so desperately interested, the only solution seems 
to be to reorganize the country under joint super- 
vision. Employing experts from the developed 
nations, they would make them responsible to an 
international commission, consisting perhaps of 
the Diplomatic Body in the country. 

There are two great objects to be attained. The 
first is the creation of efficient authority in the 
weak states ; the second is the development of 
international political agencies. In these sore 
parts of the world would arise the beginnings of a 
world state. 

If such a policy were successful, we should be 
'depriving competitive imperialism of its excuse 



170 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

and its stimulus. There would no longer be the 
need of national intervention if disorder reigned. 
There would be a recognized government to which 
men could look for protection and to which they 
could make their appeals. And while no Power 
would have to announce that it would no longer 
back up its citizens abroad, the need for backing 
them up would have been organized out of exist- 
ence. 

Then the democracies at home would have a 
chance to assert themselves. They would no 
longer be harassed by the troubles of their citizens 
abroad; they would not be stirred constantly by 
the question of whether Americans or Germans or 
Englishmen were being given a chance to exploit 
Persia or Morocco. When a man went out to in- 
vest or to trade in one of these international pro- 
tectorates, his position would be similar to that 
of a man going to do business in Alaska or in 
Chile. He would be going to a place where 
government existed. And while he might be en- 
couraged from home, he would no longer be the 
embodiment of his country's honor and prestige. 

In my opinion this is the only cure for the 
morbid conceptions of nationality and sovereignty 



THE REACTION AT HOME 171 

which afflict the world. Nationality and sover- 
eignty are primarily offensive and defensive reac- 
tions to fear. They appear in time of trouble. 
Psychologically, they are a way of rushing to 
cover, of tightening up for a fight, and they are, 
of course, most evident where there is chaos and 
danger. They subside whenever men live with 
ease and spaciousness ; they break out again at 
the threat of war or in the struggle for markets 
and concessions. That is why it is so supremely 
important to organize the backward portions of 
the earth. They are the arenas in which danger 
stimulates a primitive patriotism and rich prizes 
stimulate a primitive adventure. Reduce the dan- 
ger and the prizes by stable government, and the 
whole world will breathe more easily. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 

There is another way of looking at this matter 
which will appeal to those who are speculating 
upon the future of mankind. Anyone who thinks 
about the possibility of a world state is stopped 
to-day by the fact that there is no world patriotism 
to support it. How are we to transfer allegiance 
from the national to the international state? 

The answer depends upon an analysis of na- 
tionality. I have described it as a retreat to the 
authority and flavor of our earliest associations, as 
a defensive-offensive reaction to what seems to us 
secure. Our loyalty turns to what we associate 
with our protection and our ambitions. The rea- 
son we are not loyal to mankind in general or to 
The Hague or to internationalism is that these 
conceptions are cold and abstract beside the 
warmth of the country and place where we were 
bom. Impressed by the fear of Russian invasion, 

the internationalism of German socialists vanished. 

173 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 173 

Internationalism offered no protection. The Ger- 
man army did. To be a German was to be part of 
a tangible group with power; to be a citizen of 
the world was to be homeless everywhere. 

And yet we find Canadians and Australians 
and New Zealanders fighting and dying for a thing 
called the British Empire, a vague, formless or- 
ganization of one-quarter of the human race. 
What is it that has produced this super-national 
patriotism? Nothing less, it seems to me, than a 
realization that the protection and growth of the 
Dominions is bound up with the strength of the 
Empire. Home is the place where you are safe; 
loyalty reaches back to the source of your secur- 
ity. That is why danger has welded the British 
Empire instead of disintegrating it. 

Imagine the Empire shattered, its navy gone, 
and the Dominions left to fetch for themselves. 
What would Canada and Australia do? They 
would, it seems to me, develop a great loyalty to 
the United States. They would not face the world 
alone. They would have to find some larger po- 
litical organization in which they could feel se- 
cure. 

In other words, loyalty overflows the national 



174 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

state because in the world to-day the national 
state is no longer a sufficient protection. People 
have got to a point in their development where iso- 
lation terrifies them. They want to be members 
of a stronger group. In Europe they turned to a 
system of alliances because no nation dared to 
stand alone. We have turned in this country in 
part to an understanding with Great Britain, in 
part to the Latin-American states. All of which 
proves that patriotism is not a fixed quantity, that 
it is not attached to the map as it was drawn when 
we were at school, and that it is not only capable 
of expansion, but is crying for it. 

Fear has almost always played a large part in 
welding states together. The fear of England was 
a great argument for federal union under our Con- 
stitution; the sense of weakness in the presence 
of unfriendly neighbors undoubtedly helped to 
break down the separatism of the little German 
principalities. Just as the appearance of an 
enemy tends to blot out political differences within 
a nation, so it will often unite a number of nations. 
The rise of Germany had that eifect on the Great 
Powers of Europe ; the fear of her created a league 
almost coextensive with western civilization. It 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 175 

covered up the feud between France and England 
which comes down through the centuries; it jolted 
together an understanding with Russia, the great 
bogy of liberals. 

It is not pleasant to think of fear as one of the 
most powerful forces that unify mankind. It 
would be more gratifying to think that coopera- 
tion was always spontaneous and free. But the 
facts will not justify this belief. The inner im- 
pulse to compose differences seems often to work 
most actively when there is pressure from with- 
out. Forced by danger to cooperate, men seem to 
discover the advantages of cooperation. The Ger- 
mans are daily discovering good qualities in the 
Turks ; the British are seeing deeper into the souls 
of Russians. 

On the rim of the Pacific an issue has appeared 
which opens up difficulties far greater than those 
which have hitherto troubled diplomacy. The im- 
perial clashes of to-day, the intrigues and com- 
petitions and wars that harass our world, revolve 
about the spread of western commerce among 
backward peoples. But a new problem has arisen 
in California, Canada, Australia, infinitely more 
painful than the struggle of empires. It is a real 



176 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

friction of peoples who do not know how to live 
together and are forced therefore to compete for 
territory. The Hindus who cannot settle in Can- 
ada, the Japanese and Chinese excluded from the 
United States, are the first symptoms of a world 
problem to which no man has proposed a satis- 
factory answer. 

As the pressure of the East upon the West be- 
comes more intense, as the East becomes stronger, 
prouder, and better organized, men may wonder 
how they could ever have fought suicidal wars 
over the present stakes of diplomacy. Differences 
which once seemed " vital " may appear in a new 
perspective, and those who plead for a unification 
of western civilization be listened to with a more 
urgent interest. Out of the desire to preserve 
western power in Asia, and out of the fear of 
Asiatic aggression, may come some of the strongest 
incentives to the creation of a super-national 
state. 

It is useful perhaps to try to realize as con- 
cretely as possible the kind of Great State which 
is at present humanly possible. It will not be a 
simple organization of the whole world, governed 
by a world parliament, elected by the equal suf- 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 177 

frage of the inhabitants of the globe. It will be 
some kind of federation of the existing Powers, and 
probably not an equal federation at that. Its cen- 
tral force may be some coalition of western states, 
.acting towards the rest of the world a little, it 
may be, as Prussia has acted towards the other 
German states, or England towards the Empire. 
There will unquestionably be an effort to keep the 
power in the hands of western peoples, but among 
those western peoples there is every reason to 
expect jealousy and what is called "politics." 
They will hold together as best they can to pre- 
serve their dominion and prevent aggression. The 
greater state, as it is likely to be in actual life, 
will at the utmost probably not be more extensive 
than western commercial civilization. This state 
will face attack from without, disruption within. 
In any candid speculation it is necessary to take 
these possibilities into account. 

In short, the larger state which we are trying 
to create will for a long time bear slight resem- 
blance to the Federation of Mankind. It is likely 
to be unequal, coercive, conservative, and unsatis- 
factory. In the World State those of us who dream 
of it to-day would, I fancy, find ourselves for a 



178 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

long time members of Its Majesty's loyal oppo- 
sition. I don't know whether liberals would relish 
the prospect of this larger state if they conceived 
it realistically. They picture it in ideal terms 
to-day — as a peaceful democratic federation — be- 
cause the pictures of our fantasy are rarely made 
by a critical imagination. What we project upon 
the screen of the future is what our hearts desire, 
not what can be created out of the conflict between 
desire and reality. 

A true picture of the greater state must not 
whitewash its illiberal character. Even if we suc- 
ceed in unifying the western peoples in one state 
and ending the likelihood of war between them, we 
shall be a long way from elysium. Yet though we 
be a long way not only from elysium but from ele- ^ 
mentary human decency, though oppression, preju- 
dice, disorder, and the waste of opportunity con- 
tinue, we have every reason to believe that a more 
inclusive grouping of men will be a great gain. 
The larger the number of people who can practice 
cooperation, the more the civilizing forces are re- 
leased. Whatever our quarrel with the American 
Constitution or the German Empire, few will doubt 
that they are blessings compared to the evils of 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 179 

disunion. We must work for the larger state, rec- 
ognizing its dangers. By building with our eyes 
open we may even in some measure forestall the 
dangers we see. 

The only way in which world organization can 
command a world patriotism is by proving its use- 
fulness. If it affords a protection and produces a 
prosperity such as the national state cannot pro- 
duce, it will begin to draw upon the emotions of 
men. If they are capable of loving anything so 
abstract and complicated as the British Empire, 
or even the United States, they are not incapable 
of attaching themselves to a still larger state. For 
the moment it was evident that patriotism could 
embrace something more extensive and abstract 
than a village which a man might know personally, 
world organization ceased to be an idle dream. 
If men could be citizens of an empire scattered 
over all the seas, there was no longer anything 
inconceivable about their becoming citizens of a 
state which covered modem civilization. The idea 
has ceased to be a psychological impossibility. 

Our problem is to broaden the basis of loyalty. 
And for that task we have considerable experi- 
ence to guide us. Within a hundred and twenty- 



180 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY i 

five years we have seen the welding together of the 
United States, Germany, Italy, and Austria- 
Hungary. We have seen small rival states con- 
verted into members of federal unions. We have 
watched patriotism expand from the local unit to |j 
the larger one. We have seen Massachusetts pa- 
triots converted into American patriots, Bavarians 
into Germans, Venetians into Italians. In the last 
few years we have been witnessing the growth of 
an imperial patriotism within the British Empire. 

There is, so far as I can see, not the least 
ground for supposing that the broadening of loy- 
alty must stop at the existing frontiers. The task 
of the great unifiers, like Hamilton, Cavour, and j 
Bismarck, looked just as difficult in their day as ] 
ours does now. They had states' rights, sover- 
eignty, traditional jealousy, and economic conflicts i 
to overcome. They conquered them. Who dares 
to say that we must fail.'' 

We might sketch the elements with which they 
built. There was a propaganda behind them 
which had made the idea of union the vision of en- 
lightened people. The thing had been sung and 
preached until it had ceased to be an unfamiliar 
notion. They were certain of some spiritual re- 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 181 

sponse, although practical people hesitated and 
locally minded people raised obstructions at the 
audacity of the idea. Behind this propaganda was 
a growing experience of the nuisance of little fron- 
tiers, the cost to trade of conflicting sovereignties, 
the danger to peace of rivalry within and weak- 
ness abroad. 

In arguing for the federal Constitution, Ham- 
ilton made points which apply with almost equal 
force to the nations to-day. " In the wide field 
of western territory," he wrote, " we perceive an 
ample theater for hostile pretensions." The West 
was to the American states what Morocco and 
China are to the world to-day. " Each state . . . 
would pursue a system of commercial polity pe- 
culiar to itself. This would occasion distinctions, 
preferences, and exclusions, which would beget dis- 
content." He argued, too, that if no union, or 
a weak union, were created, the states would be at 
the mercy of foreign aggression. Hamilton and 
his group saw more clearly, perhaps, than we see 
to-day the danger of separatism and the need for 
union. 

But to see this and to say so is not enough. 
The construction of a greater state out of small 



182 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ones cannot be accomplished by wishing it. What 
the successful nation-builders have always recog- 
nized is that they must found their union on the 
self-interest of powerful groups ; by attaching 
these to the idea of union a real support would be 
created- They did not try to establish an ideal 
state without special interests on the model of 
some perfected democracy. They played a 
shrewder game than that. 

As Professor Beard shows/ the movement for the 
Constitution of the United States was originated 
and carried through by four groups of personalty 
interests which had been adversely affected under 
the Articles of Confederation: money, public 
securities, manufactures, trade, and shipping. 
These groups made the Constitution, and arranged 
matters so that they had everything to gain by its 
success. This gave them a business interest in the 
Union and secured their patriotic allegiance. In 
Germany the union was preceded by a Customs 
Union, in which large groups of traders through- 
out Germany learned the advantages of breaking 
down separatism. And when Bismarck consoli- 
dated the Empire he gave Prussia, the most power- 
* An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 183 

ful state, a special position, thus assuring its sup- 
port and leadership. When Great Britain began 
to think of imperial federation the first steps 
proposed were preferential tariffs and customs 
union. Even Austria-Hungary, which it is the 
fashion to regard as a meaningless collection of 
nationalities, is held together by powerful eco- 
nomic interests. As Mr. Arnold Tonybee says:^ 

" The two sections of the Monarchy which meet at 
Vienna are economically complementary. Coopera- 
tion with the South-East assures to the North- 
western worker that raw materials will not run 
short and that the cost of living will remain low ; co- 
operation with the North-West guarantees the South- 
E astern husbandman and shepherd a stable market 
for their annual surplus. Isolated, each section would 
be exposed to all the dislocations of shortage and 
over-production; combined, they constitute a self- 
sufficient economic unit." 

These unifying economic interests are the forces 
which any state-builder has to rely upon. If 
enough powerful people can be given a stake in 
union, a true basis for it has been laid. Once you 
have laid the basis in self-interest, once you have 
made union the power by which men can live bet- 
^ Nationality and the War. 



184 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

ter, feel securer, and follow their ambitions more 
easily, union begins to become warm and personal 
to them. They become patriots of the union. 

It is possible to illustrate this point from many 
sources. When, for example, a nation hardens 
into class divisions, when labor finds the govern- 
ment hostile, trade organizations develop around 
which clusters the same kind of loyalty that 
we usually call patriotism. The trade union is 
their bulwark and it commands their allegiance. 
When a nationality is oppressed, as the Irish, the 
Jews, the Balkan peoples, or the Hindus, they 
give their allegiance to a dream — Zionism, Ireland 
a nation, Indian nationalism. They dream of a 
government in which they shall be somebody, a 
sovereignty which will protect and advance them. 
For loyalty is a fluctuating force, not attached by 
any necessity to some one spot on the map or 
contained within some precise frontier. Loyalty 
seeks an authority to which it can be loyal, and 
when it finds an authority which gives security and 
progress and opportunity it fastens itself there. 
The problem of world organization is to attach 
enough loyalty to the immature World State to 
enable it to weather the inevitable attacks. 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 185 

This is the problem I have tried to hold con- 
stantly before me in writing this book. But be- 
fore any kind of answer could be given it was 
necessary to analyze the nature of patriotism and 
the chief issues upon which it is expended. The 
conclusion reached was that patriotisms clashed 
most of all in the backward territories of the 
world, and the suggestion followed that the or- 
ganization of these territories was the great task 
of international politics. 

In that organization lies, it seems to me, the 
entering wedge of the World State. The areas of 
imperial friction are the natural and easiest place 
to begin our construction. If there is one field 
of affairs where the international state is most 
obviously needed it is in the chaotic regions of 
the globe. There exists, moreover, sound prece- 
dent, for Africa and China, and now Latin- Amer- 
ica, are recognized as international problems. 
Even conservative diplomacy has experimented 
with world legislation and administration to deal 
with these territories. 

They offer the best opening, because the least 
amount of national vanity is involved. Germans 
and Englishmen may object with good reason to 



186 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

submitting their domestic affairs to a European 
or to a world legislature. But they can object 
with far less enthusiasm to submitting the affairs 
of Morocco. Yet if international government 
can be established in these distant regions, there 
will begin that whittling away of sovereign pre- 
tensions and national separatism which is neces- 
sary to any cooperation of mankind. 

I cannot imagine the nations agreeing to a uni- 
versal free trade or to disarmament or to unlim- 
ited arbitration. The forces that disunite are far 
too strong for any such plan. But they have 
already submitted to world conferences and regu- 
lations about backward countries. If that expe- 
rience can be augmented and elaborated, if it can 
be made to serve the traders who are interested in 
peaceful development, there could be no better 
opportunity of showing the world the concrete 
value of international government. 

Only comparatively small groups in a few 
nations have much to gain by the old-fashioned 
imperial aggression. But these will dominate 
foreign affairs so long as the backward countries 
show big risks, exorbitant profits, and general 
insecurity. By making these countries stable 



THE FUTURE OF PATRIOTISM 187 

under international control, we should, I imagine, 
draw to them the interest of the great mass of 
peaceful traders. It is in them that the embryo 
World State would find its backing. And they 
could count on the support of the workers and 
farmers who die in imperial wars and stagger 
under the taxes for armaments. 

In other words, by organizing the scenes of ex- 
ploitation we should open up the world to foreign 
trade and investment under far safer conditions. 
Instead of concessionaires, exploiters, and adven- 
turers seeking quick, high profits, we should draw 
in the merchants and investors who are seeking 
stable markets and orderly development. This 
would have an enormous effect on conditions at 
home, for it would mean that foreign affairs be- 
came an interest not of an imperialist group but 
of the far more extended middle class, and even 
working class. 

To-day these people take almost no interest in 
foreign affairs, with the result that their man- 
agement goes by default to a small coalition of 
aristocratic, military, bureaucratic, and exploit- 
ing interests. This is inevitable so long as the 
world is for the adventurer. By opening it up to 



188 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

conservative business, foreign affairs must become 
the interest of a much larger group of people. 
This seems to me the only condition under which a 
real democratization of diplomacy can take place. 
Enlarge the group who are directly interested in 
the stakes of diplomacy, their attention and activ- 
ity will follow. 



CHAPTER XIV 

A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 

On first consideration it seems rather curious to 
hear it argued that the establishment of success- 
ful government in backward states will democratize 
the control of diplomacy in the so-called civilized 
nations. That is not all, however. It can be main- 
tained, I believe, that the effect will be to blur 
frontiers, to diminish the sense of sovereignty, and 
weaken separatism. The really internationalizing 
forces of finance, commerce, labor, science, and 
human sympathy, distracted and distorted to-day 
by " national necessities," will be given a freer 
chance to assert themselves. 

This is, I realize, a large hypothesis, and only 
as an hypothesis would I wish to defend it. 

Organized behind their frontiers, even the most 
advanced democracies deal with other nations as 
" one man." Diff^erences of interest and opinion 
are sunk in order to present a united front to 
the world. J'he sinking of differences means the 
189 



190 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

absence of effective discussion and criticism of 
diplomacy. The lack of criticism creates the 
sense of sovereignty, the feeling that a nation is, on 
the whole, a law unto itself. The result of this is 
to center on foreign affairs only the most primi- 
tive emotions of offense and defense, to charge 
them with the high explosives of uncorrected and 
unconscious emotion. Governments face each 
other with an almost savage unity of feeling, a 
unity which is sovereign in its pretensions, unedu- 
cated, impatient of criticism, gullible, and panicky. 
The places where governments face each other 
are the lands which are in process of being opened 
up to commerce. The competition of concession- 
aires and exploiters is severe. These men are 
backed by their governments, and their advance- 
ment becomes a national concern. The people at 
home, living blindly behind their frontiers, regard 
these foreign business men almost as their repre- 
sentatives, and when the struggle is acute the in- 
tensity of it radiates to all the governments and 
people represented. The nations themselves come 
to regard themselves as competitors, as living or- 
ganisms which can win or be defeated. Of course 
they wish to win, and they come to measure victory 



A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 191 

by the success of their concessionaires and ex- 
porters in the new markets. Each advantage lost 
or gained becomes part of the score in which the 
prestige of a nation is counted. The people take 
an almost childish interest in whether German or 
British capital shall finance the railway to Bag- 
dad. In order to increase their prestige they in- 
crease their armaments, their object being to 
weight with force the diplomatic negotiation for 
privileges. 

This whole situation rests upon the fact that 
there are rich undeveloped countries to exploit. 
As soon as a territory becomes well-governed and 
a normal commerce begins, that territory ceases to 
be part of the stakes of diplomacy. A nation 
like the Argentine differs from Persia in that 
Persia is a field for imperialism and the Argen- 
tine is not. When a country reaches the maturity 
of the Argentine the diplomatic tension over it 
is relaxed. The adventurers and militarists and 
usurers turn elsewhere and the better kind of mer- 
chant and investor comes in. 

We have seen this process In our own history. 
When our West was undeveloped it was the scene 
of grabbing and grafting and wildcat exploita- 



192 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

tion which came near to poisoning our whole 
national life. But when the West filled up, and 
the chances of huge profit diminished, the various 
reform movements which represented the middle 
class became dominant in our politics, and our 
Western empire-builders transferred their atten- 
tions to Mexico and China and Alaska. At the 
same time a new nationalism began to pervade 
America. It meant that with the disappearance of 
our Western empire the unifying forces had come 
to the top, and in the last ten years or so we have 
taken enormous steps towards the centralizing of 
power in the federal government. The incentive 
to stay separate was disappearing. The new na- 
tionalism, however, had another aspect. We drew 
closer together within our boundaries because we 
were entering upon an imperial competition in Asia 
and Latin-America. We united among ourselves 
when our backward regions were organized, and we 
united against other nations because we were en- 
tering the backward regions where they were 
competing. We shall draw closer to other nations 
when the new fields of imperialism have been 
brought under control. 

Why shall we draw closer to them ? Chiefly be- 



A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 193 

cause the organization of weak territory will alter 
the character of national competition. At present 
it is an unscrupulous struggle for privileges in 
which no one dares to relax, because the other 
man will monopolize everything if he does. A 
nation may not want imperial expansion, but 
neither does it want another nation to close mar- 
kets and concessions against it. It is a competi- 
tion in which the lowest survives. And the only 
choice open is to grab yourself or to have some- 
one else grab. That is the dilemma which draws 
enlightened people into the imperialist camp. 
But when the territory becomes strong and ably 
governed, no one can grab, and the more civilized 
Powers are freed from the imperialist nightmare. 
The territory ceases to be a place where prestige 
and sovereignty are tested, and becomes one of the 
peaceful markets of the world. 

The people who go into it then represent much 
wider interests in the community. They are con- 
cerned in having the country efficiently governed. 
They profit by improvements, by the education of 
the natives, by sane development of resources and 
communication. It is only a small class that has 
much to gain by intrigue and corruption and dis- 



194 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

order. The world's commerce as a whole thrives 
best under efficient and progressive government. 
The first imperialist adventurers can make high 
profits by debauching a country. But the great 
mass of merchants can make a steadier profit in 
a healthy country when the skill of labor and the 
wants of the consumer are increasing. The people 
of a country have to be rich to afford a good mar- 
ket to a wide group of merchants. 

By stabilizing the backward countries, then, for- 
eign trade can really develop. And the larger the 
group at home interested in foreign trade, the 
larger will be the interest in foreign politics. This 
will bring diplomacy under the scrutiny of busi- 
ness men instead of leaving it, as to-day, to be the 
exclusive preserve of an aristocratic class in 
cahoots with adventurers. 

By increasing the number of people concerned in 
diplomacy, publicity, criticism, and discussion 
must follow. From them education. The real- 
ities of diplomacy which are hidden to-day under a 
cloud of ambiguous phrases and primitive emotion 
will be revealed. The false unity of nationalism 
will be superseded by complex facts about which 
men will differ and argue. And because people 



A BROADER BASE FOR DIPLOMACY 195 

differ, their sense of sovereignty must diminish ; 
their isolation behind frontiers must disappear. 
Agreements and disagreements will cross frontiers. 
Men will discover that they are more in sympathy 
with a group in some foreign, country than with 
some of their own fellow-citizens. Politics will no 
longer cease at the water's edge, and nations will 
no longer be able to face each other as irritable 
monarchs. The people will be less easily led by 
the nose ; diplomacy will become more and more 
the bargaining of groups, and cease to be the 
touchy competition of " national wills." The real 
effect of democracy on foreign affairs will be to 
make them no longer foreign. For democracy 
brings out the real alignment of classes and in- 
terests. 

When the people have had some experience of 
diplomatic problems, they will discover what far- 
seeing democrats have always knovra — that the 
values of mankind do not entirely coincide with 
national frontiers ; that mankind, once it realized 
its own interests, will tend to reduce the frontier 
from a monstrous chasm to a convenient adminis- 
trative division, behind which local autonomy can 
protect the healthier aspects of nationalism. 



CHAPTER XV 

PUBLIC OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

The theory I have been advancing is that the way 
to create wide interest in foreign affairs is to give 
a wider number of people an interest in them, and 
that this can be accomplished by making foreign 
trade and investment in backward countries a less 
risky and more normal enterprise. 

The effect of this enlarged interest would be to 
break down the uncanny pretentiousness of diplo- 
macy. If people discussed it long enough, and 
mulled around through it, they would soon dis- 
cover that it is neither more mysterious nor more 
sacred than politics at Washington or Albany. 
Diplomacy is carried on now by aristocrats in 
the language of royalty, and at first sight the 
democrat is inclined to feel that he is not suffi- 
ciently well dressed to talk about such high af- 
fairs. He is as uncomfortable as a man in a soft 
shirt among the starched bosoms at the opera. 
But this exclusiveness is an illusion which collapses 
196 



OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 197 

when anyone goes behind the etiquette of diplo- 
macy to the substance of it. 

People will not go behind it, however, unless 
they are made to feel that the subject-matter of 
diplomacy is related to their daily lives. Without 
some direct and constant interest, public opinion 
ignores foreign affairs until a crisis is reached. 
Everyone is interested in a dramatic event or a 
possible war. But the tedious negotiations and 
jockeyings which prepare the situations leading 
to crises and wars are not much discussed, because 
they deal with distant, shadowy countries in Asia 
or Africa or Central America. Few people could 
even locate on a map the places where most of the 
international friction occurs. 

But if trade with these regions were extended, 
hundreds of firms would be sending buyers and 
traveling salesmen to them, establishing branch of- 
fices, and in endless ways intensifying communi- 
cation. Business men would have to learn lan- 
guages, study history and political conditions, and 
some knowledge of foreign countries would be- 
come a commercial necessity. The schools would 
have to meet the demand, the newspapers would 
have to give space to foreign news, there would 



198 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

be a growing section of the public well enough 
informed to ask the State Department pertinent 
questions. Congressmen would have to show that 
they knew not only that there was urgent need for 
a new postoffice in Ashtabula, but what was the 
political situation in China or in Costa Rica. 

In brief, to have public opinion there must be 
interest, and this can be created not by preaching 
but by making the subject of it part of the busi- 
ness of life. So long as foreign politics is re- 
served for evenings and Sundays democracy will 
discuss baseball and remain perfunctory. And be- 
hind the apathy of the public an. invisible diplo- 
macy will be carried on, directed by a small class 
with special interests and abetted by the routine 
complacency of old-fashioned diplomats. Just as 
there is a political machine which governs because 
the voter is too ignorant and too lazy to govern 
himself, so there is a diplomatic machine which 
counts upon the apathy, the docility, and the ex- 
plosive emotions of the people. In this darkness 
and silence the world is rigged, and aU manner of 
cruelty and selfishness flourishes. 

The great healing effect of publicity is that by 
revealing men's motives it civilizes them. If people 



OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 199 

have to declare publicly what they want and why 
they want it, they cannot be altogether ruthless. 
It takes more courage than most men have to be 
openly selfish and regardless of the judgments of 
their fellows. A special interest frankly avowed is 
no terror to democracy. It is neutralized by pub- 
licity^ The danger democracy has always to 
guard against is the identification of special inter- 
ests with the national will, patriotism, humanity. 
The emotions of the people are easily tapped, and 
therefore easily exploited. And since the begin- 
ning of time they have been exploited in the in- 
terests of dynasties, oligarchies, priesthoods, and 
economic classes. The people have suffered, 
worked, paid, and perished for ends they did not 
understand. They have gone to battle with noble 
words in their hearts, ignorant of the true mo- 
tives and ambitions which arranged the battle. 
The great virtue of democracy — in fact, its su- 
preme virtue — is that it supplies a method for 
dragging the realities into the light, of summon- 
ing our rulers to declare themselves and submit 
to judgment. The enemies of democracies recog- 
nize the importance of this power, for they pay 
it the tribute of hypocrisy. They always put on 



200 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

a good face, they dress up their plans In high- 
sounding phrases, they touch the heart when they 
approach the pocket. 

There are certain technical difficulties in the 
way of a democratic control of foreign affairs. , 
The chief one is the congestion of business in all 
legislative bodies. There is so much to do that 
nothing can be done well. All modern states, 
moreover, are increasing every day the burden 
upon their governments. The attempt to socialize 
industry is adding unheard-of difficulties to the 
work of officials and representatives. To multiply 
them by intruding the affairs of distant countries 
seems like an attempt to break the camel's back- 
Shall we not collapse under the sheer multiplicity 
of things we are called upon to consider,'' For, 
after all, important as foreign affairs are, we can- 
not afford for one moment to relinquish the task 
of civilizing ourselves. 

The answer seems to be that the effort to make 
democracy technically efficient has just begun. 
The development of administrative commissions, 
the unifying of government departments under ex- 
ecutive leadership, the turning of the legislature 
into a criticising and controlling body, is a recent 



OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 201 

enthusiasm. Under our old naive notions of politi- 
cal machinery public opinion could not possibly 
assert itself effectively. To have added the control 
of foreign affairs would simply have been to com- 
pound chaos. But there is on foot a highly intel- 
ligent movement to reconstruct political machin- 
ery so that government becomes visible and simple 
and responsible. The relief which this brings fur- 
nishes the hope that the technique of government 
may be far enough advanced to allow wider and 
wider groups to take part in the affairs of diplo- 
macy. 

In addition to the complexity of government, 
we suffer to-day from the false unity of political 
parties. It is false because men may agree on 
foreign politics and disagree on domestic. But 
they have to vote wholesale though they think re- 
tail. The danger of this has been made evident 
by recent English history. For it is safe to say 
that the best Liberal thought was friendly to the 
internal policy of the Asquith government and 
hostile to its foreign policy. But the Liberals 
who wanted Lloyd-George had to swallow Sir Ed- 
ward Grey and Winston Churchill. They could 
not change their diplomacy without wrecking their 



202 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

social reform. I believe it to be a fact that in- 
telligent English thought is trying to invent some 
way by which it will be possible to separate poli- 
cies, to disentangle the Moroccan situation from 
the British landlords, and give public opinion a 
chance to discriminate. The same difficulty exists 
in this country. We have to choose not between 
the domestic policies of Woodrow Wilson and 
Theodore Roosevelt, nor between their foreign poli- 
cies, but between a muddle of the two. The voter 
who goes to the polls has to make up his mind 
how the value of Mr. Wilson's diplomacy com- 
pares with his views about business and labor. 
Under these conditions public opinion cannot help 
being confused and uncertain. 

But these issues carry us further afield than this 
sketch would justify. They illustrate how closely 
interrelated are the old domestic problems with the 
new foreign ones. The two sets of interests wait 
upon each other, and there is no such thing as 
dealing with one and ignoring the other. The 
whole development of democracy is distorted by the 
international situation, and this in turn is what 
it is through the social conditions within the dif- 
ferent frontiers. A relief, an improvement any- 



OPINION IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS 203 

where, radiates throughout the world organiza- 
tion. The imperial rivalries in Morocco and 
China have meant high taxes, military services, and 
delayed development in every nation of Europe. 
The menace of Prussian oligarchy, of Russian 
backwardness, of Japanese ambition, broods over 
the whole world. A victory for liberal democracy, 
the resurrection of a weak people, makes life safer 
and prosperity more certain in all the regions 
where men work. 

The effect of democracy is justly feared by 
those who wish to achieve national power by sub- 
missive unity. A people that was sophisticated 
about foreign affairs would be hard to lead, and 
its diplomats could not wield it with the same 
sense of sovereign power. But this loss of unity, 
dangerous under conditions to-day, would be a 
great blessing once the weak spots of the world 
were organized, for then the fearful tension of 
imperial competition would be relaxed, and the 
need for drilled submission, for presenting an un- 
broken front, would diminish. The effect would be 
double. The organization of backward countries 
would draw wider interests to them, and these 
wider interests, assuming control of diplomacy, 



204, THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

would democratize it and weaken its sovereign pre- 
tensions. There would be less need of sovereignty, 
less need of rigid military frontiers, less need of 
docile, uncritical patriotism, and consequently a 
vast increase of human cooperation. The great 
empires will cease to face each other as hostile 
rivals when the sources of their rivalry, the stakes 
of modern diplomacy, have been organized out of 
existence. 

That, you may say, will undoubtedly take a 
long time, and many bitter wars will be fought be- 
fore it is achieved. But I do not offer it as a 
quick panacea. I offer it simply as a compass by 
which democrats can try to steer their course. 



PART IV 

EPILOGUE 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 

There is something unhappy about the word 
pacifism. It irritates great numbers of people 
who sincerely hate the obscenity of war, and for 
some reason or other the professional pacifist seems 
to be a stultified person. Why should this be? 
He preaches an undeniable truth — that war is 
hideous and insane, that peace is preferable to it. 
Yet, though almost everyone agrees with him, the 
great majority of active people feel in their hearts 
that he is either irrelevant or considerably in the 
way. 

The reason for this attitude towards pacifism 
is that the world is not helped much by being told 
every morning that two and two are four. It is 
not helped by being told to love men as brothers. 
Men have been told that for ages, and their in- 
variable retort is : "I would gladly love him if 
only he weren't so cussed. But I start to love 
him, and he robs me. I try to treat him as a 
207 



208 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

brother, and he plots to burn down my house. 
What is the good of telling me not to fight him, 
when he is getting ready to fight me? Preach 
peace to him. I'm all right." 

The feeling that war is always defensive wrecks 
the peace propaganda. The word defensive is 
capable of being stretched indefinitely. It is not 
confined necessarily to preventing an invasion. A 
people will feel that it is fighting a defensive war 
if it attacks a nation which may attack it in the 
future. The people say to themselves : " Unless 
we strike now before that army is reorganized and 
the strategic railways built, we shall be overrun 
five years from now. We take the offensive for 
defensive reasons." Or the people may feel that 
what it regards as its legitimate expansion is being 
thwarted. It fights to defend its right to grow. 
It defends itself against encirclement and stran- | 
gling. It may feel that its influence in the world, 
" its standing as a great Power," is endangered 
by a diplomatic defeat. It fights to defend its 
prestige. So by imperceptible gradations every 
war can be justified, and, as a matter of fact, is 
justified as defensive. There is nothing extraordi- 
nary about this. Indeed, it is a platitude. No- 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 209 

body thinks of saying to himself: "I want more 
than I deserve. I'm the aggressor." Everybody 
says : " I want what is justly due me, and I'll fight 
to defend it." 

Having discovered that in practice no one 
distinguishes between offensive and defensive war- 
fare, the radical pacifist simply denounces all 
fighting, urges disarmament, and says that no 
nation should have weapons of attack or defense. 
But this doctrine goes to pieces completely 
before the determination of a people not to 
be invaded or to have its country overrun by 
armies. Against that determination pacifism is 
not likely to make much headway. In fact, when 
pacifism confines itself to the propaganda of not 
fighting, of peace-at-any-price, it has given up the 
ghost. All pretense of leadership has dropped 
away from it. What is left is little more than a 
pious futility. 

It is a futility because it shirks the whole prob- 
lem. Everyone knows that war is a stupid way to 
deal with issues, but to repeat this is in no way 
to deal with the issues. War is the desperation 
which follows a collapse of civilized adjustments. 
It is recognized everywhere as a terrible evil, but 



210 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

it is almost always accompanied by the question: 
" What else was there to do? " And unless the 
advocates of peace can throw some light on that 
question, they might as well paint coal black as 
insist that war is horrible. 

Thus the men in Europe who can really claim 
to have worked for peace are not those who wanted 
to disarm their own country, to keep it neutral 
under all circumstances. They were not those 
who talked naval holidays, and said nice things 
about other nations. The true peacemakers were 
those who grasped the real struggle between the 
Entente and the Alliance, and proposed concrete 
improvements in the diplomacy about Africa, Asia 
Minor, and the Far East. The men who had better 
solutions of the Moroccan, Congo, and Balkan 
problems were the ones who can claim now to have 
done their share of thinking for civilization. The 
constructive critics of British, French, German, 
Austrian, and Russian diplomacy carried in them 
what hope there was for peace. Those who saw 
the source of the friction and tried to remedy it 
were the real internationalists. But the people who 
wanted to be weak, who wanted to submit at all 
points, who bragged about General Strikes and not 



, THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 211 

voting military credits, were deceiving themselves 
and the world. 

For peace is not to be had by any policy so 
sterile as not fighting. Peace is to be had as a 
result of wise organization. It prevails not where 
men have failed to act, but in places where they 
have had the sense and the power to legislate and 
administer well. This country would be a bloody 
chaos if all that had been offered to the Thirteen 
States was a policy of non-resistance. What 
saved this territory of ours from interstate strug- 
gle was the establishment of a federal union 
strongly enough supported to resist dissolution. 
Peace will not come to the world on easier terms. 

It will come not by declaiming about the ab- 
surdity of armed compulsion, but by enlarging the 
areas within which force takes a more civilized 
form. For what has happened within territories 
like the United States is not the abolition of force, 
but its sublimation. We do by elections what 
sovereign states do by war. In some of the Latin- 
American countries an election is a war. The 
ballot and the bullet are almost indistinguishable. 
But in comparatively advanced countries one 
group prevails over another by voting it out of 



212 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

office, not by shooting it out of office. Where no 
elections take place, or where the elections are 
corrupt, an appeal to arms is always an open pos- 
sibility. 

The grand disputes of states are not over 
the interpretation of recognized international law. 
If they were, the future of arbitration would be 
brighter than it is. The real disputes are matters 
of policy. They are attempts to say how some- 
thing shall be done, whose word of command shall 
be recognized. The differences are political, not 
juridical. They resemble the dispute between the 
high protectionism of the Republican party and 
the tariff-for-revenue theory of the Democrats. It 
is a clash of views which cannot be settled by 
a court. Only an election can settle it. What 
does an election mean.? It means that there is a 
counting of electoral strength, followed by one 
party's taking possession of the government. The 
victors move in to the Capitol at Washington, put 
their followers in the administrative offices, and see 
that their policy is carried out. 

When no such political organization exists, 
where there are no satisfactory elections, the peo- 
ple out of power have to find some other way of 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 213 

making their views prevail. They may send a war- 
ship to overawe a city. They may mobilize on 
the frontier. They may declare an economic boy- 
cott. They may actually march in, throw their 
opponents out of their office chairs, and put their 
own officials in power. 

The modern substitute for war is not arbitra- 
tion, but election. In a primitive society you have 
to drive your opponent out of office at the point 
of the sword. In more advanced societies you force 
your opponents out of office, change the personnel 
of the government by patronage and what is known 
as the spoils system. In the most mature govern- 
ments we know the body of administrators is so 
well educated and so sensitive that it will register 
the result of an election, " carry out the will of 
the majority " with a minimum of physical change. 
The element of force has practically disappeared, 
because people are able to form opinions, express 
them, and trust their fellow-citizens to realize 
them in practice. 

The difference between the so-called evolution- 
ary and revolutionary socialists depends chiefly 
upon this point. The revolutionist has lost faith 
in election, and believes that it is necessary to 



214 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

seize authority by force and carry out his pro- 
gramme by compulsion. The moderate radical 
believes that democratic governments will respond 
to a majority, that " capitalist officials " may even 
be ready to administer socialist policies. It is a 
difference of opinion (based on a difference of 
temperament and experience) as to whether strug- 
gle can be sublimated into politics. 

Industrial statesmanship to-day is not con- 
cerned with preaching non-resistance to labor. 
Its task, as we begin to see it, is to translate class 
warfare from the plane of strike and lockout to 
the level of representative government. Our ob- 
ject is to introduce political method into the gov- 
ernment of industry, to substitute the use of 
democratic machinery for the existing autocracy 
tempered by revolt. Instead of compelling work- 
ingmen to use the costly method of terrorizing the 
employer, the aim is to have labor secure recog- 
nized industrial power in the management of in- 
dustry. 

Between governments no adequate machinery 
exists by which one policy can be made to sup- 
plant another. No court can supply that machin- 
ery. For the real problem is to legislate and have 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 215 

the laws administered. The dispute cannot be 
settled by a judicial inquiry based on accepted 
principles. The dispute is a matter of clashing 
interests and beliefs, and the solution is not a 
judgment, but a choice. The question is not 
which of these two groups is abstractly right, 
but which of these two groups is to have the say-so. 
In the last analysis our troubles are due to the 
fact that there is no omniscient tribunal which 
makes decisions for us. We have beliefs, opinions, 
ihterests which we tend to proclaim as truth. But 
as human beings we see different truths in the same 
situations, and no pope exists whom we are ready 
to have pronounce between us. That is why we 
put compulsion behind our beliefs, why we wish 
to back up our notion of right with a good supply 
of might. If the right were so clear that all could 
see it and accept it gladly, there would be no need 
of force. It is the obscurity of truth and justice, 
the finite human quality of them, which makes them 
unable to prevail alone. 

Within a nation we do not pretend that pro- 
tectionism is " absolutely right " because the Re- 
publicans have won the election. We say simply 
that the Republicans are entitled to introduce pro- 



216 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

tectionism and experiment with it. We do not 
claim that God is on the side of either of the big 
guns or the big votes ; we merely submit to having 
the view with the big votes prevail. If we can 
test the strength of an idea by votes rather than 
guns, we feel we have made an enormous advance 
in civilization. Now, to make big decisions by 
counting votes may be only a little less absurd 
than by killing men, but it has obvious advantages. 
And till we discover some subtler way of trans- 
lating clashes of human interest, we must regard 
the methods of politics as a superb advance over 
the methods of war. 

The political method, however, depends upon or- 
ganization. It cannot be applied between two 
sovereign states or between two warring classes 
each with pretensions to sovereignty. Before 
people can act together politically they have to 
break down the sovereign frontier, and merge in 
some kind of larger union. Their fundamental 
patriotism has to include the whole group of 
which their opponents are a part. Political oppo- 
nents have to have a common loyalty if they are 
to settle their differences by political methods. 

Peace implies not only the construction of 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 217 

machinery for unifying mankind, but the readi- 
ness of enough men to defend that machinery. 
Such readiness is, of course, a risk. We may be 
fooled. But a war fought to preserve the fabric 
of international order would be worth fighting, 
for that order is the only approach we have to the 
permanent peace of mankind. To refuse defense 
to the international society is not a way of avoid- 
ing war. It is an invitation to many wars. 

Indeed, the policy of peace-at-any-price is a 
peril to internationalism. The people who are 
most likely to adopt it are those whose influence 
is most needed in world politics. The half-civilized 
aggressors will not be converted. The democrats 
may be. The humane people, the very ones who 
ought to be influential, are most susceptible to this 
teaching. They are the desirable members of any 
international society. But peace-at-any-price 
means an abdication by them. They resign, and 
leave the world to harder men. Some influence 
they would no doubt continue to have. But if they 
succeed in convincing the conquering empires that 
they will not resist, pacifist democrats must for 
the present give up hope of acting effectively in 
world politics. They wiU not be heard about 



218 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

China, Africa, Central America, if they make it 
known that under no circumstances will they stand 
up and fight. 

The only policy they can possibly adopt is that 
of isolation. They can stay at home, and pass 
resolutions against the evils being done in other 
parts of the world. They may not be invaded. 
They may escape with a whole skin. But they 
must give up even the shadow of a pretense that 
they are working for the world's peace. They can 
be good monks, and perhaps they will be saved 
by faith. They will not be saved by works. For 
they are leaving mankind and the future in the 
lurch. 

It would indeed be a tragic situation if the 
humane and enlightened people abandoned their 
influence in world politics. It would resemble the 
well-known process of being kicked upstairs. The 
more spiritually fit a people was for international 
leadership, the more it would withdraw from the 
turmoil. The nations which were least inclined to 
exploit and subjugate, which had the highest re- 
gard for defenseless peoples, would lose their pres- 
tige because they were committed to the dogma 
that force is evil. To put the matter concretely. 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 219 

imagine the world if the comparatively liberal 
Powers — the United States, France, Great Britain, 
(and even Germany — were to isolate themselves 
within their frontiers, and take no decisive share 
in the outer politics of the world. Would the 
cause of peace be advanced by the giving of a free 
hand to Russian and Japanese imperialism? 

The more serious indictment of the peace-at- 
any-price propaganda is that its success would 
mean not the abandonment of force, but the con- 
centration of force in the least democratic em- 
pires. The weaker western civilization became, 
the stronger the despotisms would be. For though 
the pacifists may possibly in the end convert the 
despotisms too, they will convert the liberal coun- 
tries first. They will be accomplishing the very 
result which every lover of peace ought to dread 
the most — the focusing of power in the hands of 
those who are least likely to use it well. If there 
are to be armaments in the world, it is surely better 
that they should be controlled by people who have 
been civilized in democracy than by oligarchies 
who dominate a docile, mystically consecrated 
population. Our irreverent, shirt-sleeved, strag- 
gling people is a far safer master of force than an 



220 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

empire in which a Tsar or a Mikado is not only 
the autocrat of the state, but the vicar of God. 

I do not see how anyone with pretensions to in- 
ternational loyalty can contemplate abandoning 
the organization of the half-developed parts of 
the earth to the illiberal Powers. Surely, if any 
of our finer hopes are to be realized, it will be be- 
cause the more enlightened democracies assume a 
decisive position in world politics. Unless the 
people who are humane and sympathetic, the peo- 
ple who wish to live and let live, are masters of 
the situation, the world faces an indefinite vista 
of conquest and terrorism. Yet the people who 
are humane are the ones who listen to the propa- 
ganda of non-resistance. If they are converted, 
they put themselves in a position where they can- 
not oppose the intrigue and brutality of the ag- 
gressive empires. Ask an imaginative Chinaman 
whether the withdrawal of the United States from 
his country has worked for or against his security 
and happiness. Ask a far-seeing Brazilian whether 
he would in his candid moments like to see the 
United States scrap its navy. 

The ideal condition for the world would, of 
course, be the concentration of power in the hands 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 221 

of those whose purposes were civilized. Little 
force would actually be employed. The potential- 
ity of it would then be enough to keep the ag- 
gressor in check, and government by consent and 
education would be the normal process of affairs. 
Just because coercion is the worst instrument of 
politics, the possibility of coercion must rest with 
those who have least incentive to use it. We have 
had to strengthen the power of our government in 
order to tame the power of corporations. If our 
government had remained weak, special interests 
would flourish unchecked. By concentrating supe- 
rior force in the national administration, demo- 
cratic politics can operate. But if we said dog- 
matically, as the anarchists do say, that state 
power is an unmitigated evil, we should simply 
be encouraging corporations to govern as they 
please. The labor movement has discovered the 
same truth. It is beginning to know that its only 
way to respectful treatment is by accumulating 
power to offset the employers. Industrial democ- 
racy begins to be practiced where labor's prestige 
is great enough to be impressive. 

I realize that this sounds suspiciously like the 
doctrine known as the Balance of Power. That is 



222 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

just what it is, and there is no need to be afraid 
of a bad name. Where coercive force exists, it 
must either be neutralized by force or employed 
in the interests of what we regard as civilization. 
Those who are working for a securely organized 
democratic world, for an international coopera- 
tion, have got somehow to meet the great forces 
which fight against them. They will not be al- 
lowed to construct in peace according to their 
heart's desire. At every step they will be resisted 
from without by governments with different pur- 
poses, from within by groups of people with dif- 
ferent philosophies and special interests. How 
they are to overcome this resistance without bal- 
ancing off its power, I do not see. To be sure, 
the mere fact that democrats possess force may 
destroy their democratic faith. The tool may be- 
come the god. But if democrats are not sure 
enough of themselves to keep the faith, if they are 
in mortal dread of being led into temptation, they 
are pretty poor servants of a finer world. 

This dread is an old one among democrats. It 
rests on some experience. Too often they have 
seen men acquire power only to destroy their cause. 
The result is that all liberal movements are cor- 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 22S 

roded by distrust and a fear of responsibility. 
They prefer to stay weak, that they may remain 
pure. But it is a blind alley. When they are 
weak the purposes of their movement are 
thwarted. They purchase their integrity at the 
price of impotence. This is just what the pacifist 
is inclined to do. Rather than risk the danger of 
seeing his own country become aggressive and im- 
perialistic, he prefers to see it take no part in 
world politics. He preaches isolation because he 
fears contact. 

To be sure, contact is dangerous. If America 
enters the arenas of friction it will be exposed to 
many threats not only from other nations, but 
from within the country. The danger of war 
will be increased, and the danger of what is 
known as militarism. Now, our virtue may be so 
poor a thing that it will vanish with temptation. 
We may be like one of those teetotalers who does 
not dare to pass a saloon. Having tasted world 
power, we may go drunk with it. But if that is 
the kind of people we are, how impudent of us to 
utter one word in criticism of the military empires. 
If experience of democracy, if a century of com- 
parative order and prosperity and human equality 



224. THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

have made no difference, if we are bound to act 
like all the rest as soon as we touch the world's 
affairs, then we might as well humbly retire and 
cultivate our private gardens. 

It may be an unwarranted optimism, but there 
are not many of us who will accept this counsel of 
despair. We do not believe that the world can be 
regenerated by our assuming a passive but morally 
perfect attitude towards it. The problem of or- 
ganizing the globe against competitive exploitation 
is an immensely intricate positive programme, re- 
quiring power and ability and inventiveness for its 
realization. To lay all our emphasis on not fight- 
ing and being amiable is to divert the attention : 
from the real business at hand. For the supreme 
task of world politics is not the prevention of 
war, but a satisfactory organization of mankind. 
Peace will follow from that. That is, in fact, what 
peace is. We shall end war by dealing effectively 
with our problems, not by reiterating that war is 
horrible. 

Is there any pacifist so dogmatic that he can 
rejoice because the defenselessness of China made 
it unable to resist aggression? Is anything 
gained for the world's permanent peace by the 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 9.25 

prospect of a conquered or disintegrated China? 
Only the blindness which does not see beyond the 
immediate present can feel anything but sorrow 
if China is on the road to chaos. For the trouble 
being prepared by the weakness of China will trou- 
ble the world. It will haunt its peace. And no 
clairvoyance is needed to prophesy that if China 
is unable to stand on its feet and assume control 
of its own affairs, innocent people the world over 
will pay taxes for armaments, and those who are 
boys to-day will perish on distant battlefields. 
This is no scaremongering. The Chinese are al- 
most a quarter of the human race. Let them sink 
into helpless disorder, thwart them, oppress them, 
and they will become to the world what Turkey 
and the Balkan states have been to Europe — a run- 
ning sore which infects everyone. 

How irrelevant to such a problem is the doctrine 
preached by the ordinary pacifist. As if not fight- 
ing were a policy which touched even the fringes 
of this problem so gigantic that it darkens the 
thought of anyone who looks into the future. For 
of all the stakes ever offered to diplomacy China 
is the richest and largest. If comparatively in- 
significant territories like Morocco and Bosnia can 



226 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

bring the world to the edge of war, what lusts of 
imperialism will a helpless China arouse? 

If we are to grapple with the issues which dis- 
tract the world, we have got to enter the theaters 
of trouble. If the United States is to be a leader, 
or even an important factor, in the stabilizing of 
mankind, it must create interests which will jus- 
tify its participation in world politics. It must 
invest and trade in the backward countries. This 
will give our diplomacy a leverage on events. And 
to be effective that diplomacy will have to be 
weighted with armaments of sufficient power to 
make it heard by the Great Powers. Moreover, 
we shall have to abandon our traditional dislike 
of European alliances. If we enter the arena 
of the world, we cannot stand entirely alone; we 
shall have to work in coalition with the Powers 
whose policy is most nearly like our own. 

That is, I realize, a terrifying programme to 
most Americans. It terrifies me, and disturbs 
every prejudice of my training. We have all of us 
been educated to isolation, and we love the irre- 
sponsibility of it. But that isolation must be 
abandoned if we are to do anything effective for 
internationalism. Of course, if we wish to let the 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 227 

world go hang, we may be able to defend our coasts 
against attack, and establish a kind of hermit 
security for ourselves. But even that security will 
be precarioua in a world arranged as this one has 
come to be. Less and less is it possible to remain 
neutral, to stay out of the conflicts. Without the 
slightest intention of taking part in the great 
war we have several times almost been dragged 
into it. And though we may have escaped fight- 
ing, we have suffered tremendously because the dis- 
location of the globe affects all its parts* 

Real isolation has, in fact, become a myth, and 
our only choice is between being the passive vic- 
tim of international disorder and resolving to be 
an active leader in ending it. It is not an easy 
choice. As Lord Morley has said, politics is the 
science of the second best, and in surrendering our 
isolation we shall surrender much that is precious 
to us. But one thing is certain : we shall be safer 
by surrendering it deliberately, by making the 
choice with our eyes open, than by allowing our- 
selves to be dragged unprepared and surprised into 
the melee of the nations. 

Finally, the internationalist to-day cannot be 
effective as an unorganized private citizen. He 



228 THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY 

cannot deflect appreciably the course of world 
politics from the platform of a peace society. He 
must work through some agency which has pres- 
tige with the governments. The only available 
agency is his own government. 

The strategy of peace is to use the democratic 
governments as organs of leadership in world poli- 
tics. The pacifist must work to control his own 
government, not in order to make it powerless, 
but in order to make it a power in the decent 
handling of what are now the stakes of diplomacy. 
If a world state is created, it will be through the 
initiative of national governments. They are to 
the internationalist what the trades unions are to 
industrial democracy — organs of power through 
which a new view can be made to prevail. 

These, as I see them, are the conditions under 
which an internationalist remains a patriot, not 
in order to support his country right or wrong, 
not in order to aggrandize it, but in order to use 
it as a lever of influence in world politics. By be- 
coming an anti-patriot he simply cuts himself off 
from the only organization through which he can 
hope to make himself eff^ective in the aff'airs of 
nations. The failure of the German socialists is 



THE STRATEGY OF PEACE 229 

not that they neglected to destroy the German 
Empire, but that they were unable to control its 
policy. Had they succeeded, they might have 
turaed the power of Germany into an incompar- 
able guardian of civilization. 

The difference, then, between the true interna- 
tionalist and the unreasoning patriot lies in the 
supremacy of his conscious purpose. He is loyal 
for reasons, and not merely by habit. He holds 
his local patriotism with a sense that it is tem- 
porary, knowing that he must be ready to merge 
it in a larger devotion. He remains a nationalist 
in practice because that is the only effective way 
he can work for internationalism. He preserves 
his country in trust for that greater state which 
will embrace civilization. He regards his alle- 
giance as a stewardship. It is true that he may for- 
get. He may sink into a dangerous patriotism. 
That is one of the risks of an active life. It is 
always possible that men will lose sight of the 
end and become fanatic about the means. There is 
no guarantee against this insidious danger. Only 
constant criticism and candid discussion can 
guard against it. 



INDEX 



Africa, 90; Germany in, 98, 

99, 100 
Algeciras, 131 ; lesson, 148, 

149; Morocco charter, 145- 

147. See also Morocco 
Alsace-Lorraine, 107 
American abroad, the, 68, 69 
American countrj-^ town, 70 
Americanism, 42 
Angell, Norman, 118 
Anglo-French Entente, 123 
Arbitration, 136, 138, 139; 

failure of, 140; weakness 

of, 142 
Argentina, 191 
Army mobility, 29, 30 
Art, American, 67, 68 
Asia, 176 

Austria-Hungary, 183 
Australia, 173 

Backward countries, 87, 88; 
difficulties in international- 
izing, 151-155; exploiting, 
190, 191; stabilizing, 194; 
trade in, 163, 164; war in 
Europe over, 124, 125 
Balance of Power, 221, 222 
Banco di Roma, 101-105 
Beard, Charles A., cited, 182 
Belgian Congo. See Congo 
Belgium, 82, 167 
Berlin Conference of 1885, 

130 
Bernhardi, 28 
Bismarck, 130, 131, 182 
"Breaks," 38, 40 
British Empire, 88, 173 
Bryan, William J., 10, 21 



Billow, Prince, quoted, 137, 

138 
Business, diplomacy, and 

patriotism, 71-83 

Canada, 173 

Childhood, 60, 67 

China, 166, 167, 224-226 

Civil War, 38, 109, 110 

Commerce, 42 

Commercial development, 98 

Competition, national, 193 

Concessions, 94 

Congo, 91, 130 

Congress, distrust of, 16, 32 

Constitution, U. S., 182 

Copper, 76, 77 

Corporations, 221 

Country town, 71 

Cowardice, 62 

Cultural diiferences, 112, 113 

Democracy, ceasing at wa- 
ter's edge, 34, 35; efficient, 
200, 201; essence of, 47; 
fear of, 203; foreign af- 
fairs and, 195; virtue of, 
199; war and, 24; war- 
making power of, 15 

Denmark, 166 

Deutschland in Waff en, 43 

Diplomacy: Algeciras lesson, 
148, 149; British, 79; 
broader base for, 189-195; 
decisive thing in, 81 ; hid- 
den, 194, 198; patriotism, 
business, and, 71-83; per- 
sonal side of, 22; popular 
thinking about, 111; prize^ 



281 



232 



INDEX 



82; chief problem of, 87; 

secret, 6 
Diplomatic events, recent, 

113 
Diplomats: lack of power, 

32, 33; personal conference 

of, 21 
Dogmatism, 51, 53 

Economic interests, 183 
Economic motive, patriotism 

and, 72, 73 
Editors, 56, 57 
Elections, 211, 212, 213 
England: decadent?, 78, 79; 
Germany and, 33; Mo- 
rocco threat, 123 
European concert, 3, 4, 108 
European legislature. See 

Legislatures 
Europeans, government rec- 
ord, 91 
Expansion, 90 

Fatherland, 31 
Fear, 172, 174, 175 
Firearms and spirits, 164 
Flag, trade and the, 159, 166 
Foreign affairs, American 
people's opinion, 18-20; 
democracy's control, 25, 
34, 35, 46, 200; domestic 
and, 50; public interest in, 
187, 188; public opinion in, 
196-204 
Foreigners, 38, S3, 54; sym- 
pathy for, 56 
France, Morocco and, 97; 

Mexico and, 128 
Free trade, 118, 119, 120 
Friction arenas, 87-109 
Frontiers, 38, 195; erosion, 
45; government, 49; neces- 
sity, 39 
Fullerton, Morton, quoted, 
100, 101 



German Crown Prince, 43 
German propaganda, 65 
German Southwest Africa, 

99 
German-Americanism, 63-66 
Germany as the Fatherland, 
63; economic development, 
43; England and, 33; inter- 
ests and prestige, 137, 138; 
real quarrel, 139; union, 
182 
Government, publicity in, 

201; strong, 221 
Great Illusion, 118, 119 
Great Powers, 82 
Grey, Sir Edward, 91, 201; 
effort for European con- 
cert, 3; lack of power, 33 

Hague Court, 139; defect, 

140 
Haiti, 168 
Haldane, Lord, 54 
Hamilton, 181 
Harris, Norman Dwight, 

quoted, 91, 92, 130 
Herreros, 99 

Humane persons, 217-220 
Hyphen, 64, 65 

Imperialism: cause of war, 
166; central nerve, 159; 
complexity, 97; core of, 
150-159; evils, 158; for- 
mula, 105; groups of in- 
terests, 106; outbreak, 95 
India, 88 

Industrial democracy, 221 
Industrial statesmanship, 214 
International governments, 
148; destroying, 153-155; 
evils, 158; supporting, 155- 
157 
Internationalism, 135; peril, 
217; proposal advocated, 
155 



INDEX 



233 



Isolation, 218, 223, 226, 227 
Italia Irredenta, 107 
Italy and Tripoli, 100-105 

Japan, 20, 41 
Jews, 66 
Jingoism, 53 

King, uses of, 26-38 

Labor, 221 
Laissez-faire, 165 
League of Peace, 140, 141 
Legislatures: European, 130; 
international, 131 ; inter- 
national, failure of, 132; 
permanent world, 133-135, 
144 
Lloyd George, 80, 201; 

quoted, 61, 62 
Local pride, 71-74 
London Conference, 131 
Loyalties, early, 61, 62 
Loyalty, 184; broadening the 

basis of, 179, 180 
Luderitz, Herr, 99, 100 
Lusitania, 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 
31, 32 

McKinley, President, 24 
" Made in Germany," 78 
Mexico, 93, 94, 165; France 

in, 128, 129; intervention, 

21; Wilson's policy, 129 
Militarism, ideal of, 42 
Monroe Doctrine, 18, 19, 107, 

128 
Morley, Lord, cited, 227 
Morocco, 77, 80, 97, 121, 122, 

145; study needed, 150 

Nation: mystical entity, 58, 
59; thought of, 28. See 
also People 
Nation (London), quoted, 58 
National interests, 137 



National unity in danger, 36 

Nationality, 59, 60; arousing, 
66; essence, 67, 69; mor- 
bid, 171; thwarted, 62 

New York Evening Tele- 
gram, 31 

Newspapers in wartime, 54, 
55 

Nigeria, 91, 92, 93 

Nightingale, Consul, quoted, 
91 

Non-resistance, 220 

One-man power. See Presi- 
dent ; King 

Open door, 114-117, 120 

Opposition, value, 51 

Organizing, 168. See also 
Peace 

Origins: Haven in distress, 
7; retreat to, 61; worthy, 
62 

Pacelli, Ernesto, 101 
Pacific Ocean problem, 175 
Pacifism, irrelevancy, 297 
Pacifists, duty, 228; weak- 
ness, 113, 114 
Pan-Americanism, 129 
Panic in thinking, 8-10 
Passion, 76 

Patriotism, 57; business, 
diplomacy, and 71-73; 
clashing, 185; expanding, 
173, 174; future, 172-188; 
in the rough, 58-70; mean- 
ing, 36; primitive, 171; 
true, 228, 229; world, 172, 
179 
Peace, agency of, 228 ; at any 
price, 209, 217-219; Euro- 
pean programmes before 
the war, 6; organization 
the basis of, 211, 224; 
permanent, 5, 217; pro- 
grammes, 136; strategy of. 



234 



INDEX 



207-228. See also Pa- 
cifism; Pacifists 

Peace-makers, real, 210 

People, American, thoughts 
and will, 26, 27 

People, inertia, 28, 29; nego- 
tiating, 26, 30-32 

Persia, 164, 165, 166, 168, 191 

Pichon, M., quoted, 97 

Pinon, M., quoted, 101 

Poincar6, M. Raymond, 
quoted, 97 

Political parties, false unity, 
201, 202 

Politics, 216 

Population, mixed, 40, 41; 
solidified, 42 

Power. See Balance of 
Power 

Powers, Great, 89 

Preparedness, basis, 127, 128 

President, U. S., opinions, 
17, 18; war-making power, 
15-25 

Prestige, national, 77, 78, 79, 
108, 137 

Pride of race, 62 

Protection, 119 

Protectorate, 168 ; interna- 
tional, 169, 170 

Prussia, 182, 183 

Public. See People 

Public opinion. President's 
control, 22, 23 

Public spirit, 71, 72 

Publicity, 198, 199, See also 
Foreign affairs 

Pure races, 40, 45 

Real estate, patriotism and, 

74 75 
Realpolitik, 111-126 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 24 

Senate, world, 133 
Serbia, 82 



Shipping, England's control 
of U. S., 44 

Small states, 166, 167. Se« 
also Backward countries 

Socialists, evolutionary and 
revolutionary, 213, 214; 
German, 228, 229 

Sovereignty of ideas, 53 

Sovereignty, theory of na- 
tional, 48. See also Na- 
tionality 

State, dynastic conception, 
36, 37. See also Govern- 
ment; World state 

Strikes, pairing off, 39 

Thinking alike, 51 
" Touch me," 163 
Toynbee, Arnold, quoted, 

183 
Trade, flag following, 159 
Trade union, 184 
Tripoli, 100-105 
Turks, 42, 127; Tripoli, 

Italy, and, 101-105 

Ulster, 42 

Union, 178-184 

United States, 94; duty, 226, 

227 

Veblen, Thorstein, quoted, 
71, 72 

Vera Cruz, 16 

Viereck, G. S., 66 

Votes, 216. See also Elec- 
tions 

War, commerce and, 42; de- 
fensive, 208 ; democracy 
and, 24; escape, 23, 
25; fusion of nations 
against, 45; industry and, 
43, 44; modern substitute, 
213; platitudes about, 207- 
210; psychology of, 35, 36. 
Se« also Militarism 



INDEX 



235 



War in Europe: cause, 82, 

127; real contest, 124, 

125 
War-making power in tlie 

United States, 15 
Weak states. See Backward 

countries; Small states 
West, the, 191, 192 
West, Rebecca, quoted, 58, 

59 
Western peoples, 177, 178 



Wilson, Woodrow, 15 

World government, 130 

World problem, 127 

World State: difficulties, 143, 
144; entering wedge, 185- 
187; organizing, 224; pres- 
ent possibility, 176, 177, 
178; United States and, 
226 

Zabern, 49 



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